Free Thought Lives

Twitter’s Trans-Activist Decree

On November 15, I woke up to find my Twitter account locked, on account of what the company described as “hateful conduct.” In order to regain access, I was made to delete two tweets from October. Fair enough, you might think. Concern about the tone of discourse on social media has been widespread for years. Certainly, many have argued that Twitter officials should be doing more to discourage the vitriol and violent threats that have become commonplace on their platform.

In this case, however, the notion that my commentary could be construed as “hateful” baffled me. One tweet read, simply, “Men aren’t women,” and the other asked “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?” That last question is one I’ve asked countless times, including in public speeches, and I have yet to get a persuasive answer. I ask these questions not to spread hate—because I do not hate trans-identified individuals—but rather to make sense of arguments made by activists within that community. Instead of answering such questions, however, these same activists insist that the act of simply asking them is evidence of hatred.

The statement that “Men aren’t women” would have been seen as banal—indeed, tautological—just a few years ago. Today, it’s considered heresy—akin to terrorist speech that seeks to “deny the humanity” of trans-identified people who very much wish they could change sex, but cannot. These heretics are smeared as “TERF”—a pejorative term that stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist—and blacklisted. On many Twitter threads, the term is more or less synonymous with “Nazi.” Earlier this year, Tyler Coates, an editor at the apparently respectable Esquire magazine, tweeted out “FUCK TERFs!” and promptly got retweeted more than a thousand times.

In many progressive corners of academic and online life, it now is taken as cant that anyone who rejects transgender ideology—which is based on the theory that a mystical “gender identity” exists within us, akin to a soul—may be targeted with the most juvenile and vicious attacks. “Punch TERFs and Nazis” has become a common Twitter tagline, as is the demand that “TERFs” be “sent to the gulag.” (This latter suggestion was earnestly defended in a thread authored by students who run the official Twitter account of the LGBTQ+ Society at a British university. The authors went on to say that the gulag model would, in fact, comprise “a compassionate, non-violent course of action” to deal with “TERFs” and “anti-trans bigots” who must be “re-educat[ed].”)

In other cases, attacks on “TERFs” take the form of taunts that one might hear in middle school. Last August, for instance, The Cut­published a lengthy investigation into “TERF bangs.” The author, Amanda Arnold, claimed to be interested in how “short, chunky bangs” came to be wrongly associated with “TERFs”; but of course, the whole thing was a thinly veiled attempt to provoke catty disparagement of women who don’t toe the party line on gender mysticism. And while The Cut may be considered a vacuous fashion blog, it is a vacuous fashion blog run under the auspices of New York magazine.

The reason why engagement with the most militant trans activists is fruitless, and yields only a slew of empty mantras and false stereotypes, is that one cannot argue with religious faith. At the core of transgender ideology is the idea that the old mind/body problem that has bedeviled philosophers for centuries has been definitively solved by gender-studies specialists—and that a female mind can exist within a male body and vice versa. Moreover, we are informed that these mystical phenomena are invisible in all respects, except to the extent that they are experienced from within—which means the only reliable indicator of supposed bona fide transgenderism is the self-declaration of trans-identified individuals (many of whom seem to have made these stunning discoveries as part of a sudden social trend).

In March, the San Francisco Public Library hosted an art exhibit featuring the work of Scout Tran, founder of the Degenderettes, a trans activist group that has taken to showing up at LGBT and women’s events with baseball bats and mock-bloody t-shirts festooned with the words “I punch TERFs.” This is considered very edgy and progressive in the avant-garde scene. One trans exhibit included a display of these gore-themed shirts alongside baseball bats and axes, painted pink and blue. In case there was any doubt that these are intended to be viewed as weapons brandished in the prosecution of a culture war, some of the bats were wrapped in barbed wire—presumably as a threatened means to turn a regular old woman-beating into a maiming, or even a murder.

While it might comfort some to view these threats as performative or theoretical, that isn’t always the case. On May 29, a lesbian named Taelor Furry was beat up outside the Grey Fox Pub, a gay bar in St. Louis, Mo. Her attackers were queer-identified women who had accused Furry of being a “TERF.”

In April, a trans-identified biological male who goes by the name “Tara Wolf” was convicted of assault after beating 60-year-old Maria MacLauchlan, who had gathered with other women at Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park to discuss mooted gender-identity legislation. Prior to the gathering, this champion of progressive ideals had posted on Facebook, asking where the event would be taking place, as the assailant wanted to “fuck some TERFs up.”

At this year’s Pride March in Montreal, biological males who identify as women led the parade, carrying a banner reading, “Transwomen first/Never again last.” One participant carried a sign with the words, “Begone TERF,” as if he were summoning his mystical powers to cast a hex on we TERFy witches. At Dyke Marches, lesbians who express reservations about making themselves sexually available to suitors who just happen to have penises are now commonly screamed at.

In San Francisco, which one might assume to be a hot spot for lesbian pride, a group of women carrying signs that read, “Proud to be lesbian,” “Lesbian Visibility,” and “Lesbian not queer” were harassed and bullied. Feminist historian Max Dashu, who was in attendance, said she and the other “old lesbians” were surrounded by “young queers” who pushed them and chanted “TERFs, go home.” On Facebook, she wrote: “I’ve been to many marches, including dangerous ones, but this was the most vicious episode I have ever experienced, ever in my life.” As a result of Dashu attending the march alongside these heretic women, she was disinvited as a speaker, most ironically, from a group called the Modern Witches Confluence. When it comes to the campaign against TERFs in trans-compliant progressive circles, even self-described witches now go in for witch hunts.

January 20, 2018 Seattle, Wash. Womxn March

In Vancouver, Canada, where I live, a group of lesbians attended this year’s Dyke March wearing t-shirts with the word “Lesbian” written overtop a drawing of a uterus, and carrying signs featuring their “lesbian heroes.” Before the march began, they were approached by two members of the Vancouver Dyke March board, who told them they could not participate while wearing these t-shirts and carrying these placards, as they were “trans-exclusionary.” They also were told that if any of their signs featured the venus symbol (which represents “woman”) or “XX,” symbolizing the fact that females have two of the same kind of sex chromosome, they would have to remove them. The group declined to follow these instructions, but joined the march anyway. As the women walked on, they were surrounded by trans activists, who shouted “TERF bigots,” “Transwomen are women,” “This is an inclusive march,” and, “There is no room for hate at the Dyke March.” One trans-identified male-bodied individual ran through their group repeatedly, yelling “Get your ‘Fuck TERF’ pins!” at the women. (Afterwards, the Dyke March board published a statement, labeling the women “TERFs” and “a hate group”: The Vancouver Dyke March, they said, is “upset, angry, and disappointed by the actions of those people who sought to reject and exclude valued members of our communities, including trans folks.”)

Like other women who have been sounding the alarm about these trends, I regularly get accused of spreading moral panic, and of attempting to vilify trans-identified people as inveterate predators. But my issue isn’t with “transgender people,” per se, but, rather, with men. There is a reason certain spaces are sex-segregated—such as change rooms, bathrooms, women’s shelters, and prisons: because these are spaces where women are vulnerable, and where male predators might target women and girls. These are spaces where women and girls may be naked, and where they do not want to be exposed to a man’s penis, regardless of his insistence that his penis is actually “female.”

The internally experienced mystical conceits of a man’s mind do not affect any of the reasons why sex-segregated spaces were created in the first place. Female firefighters in Canada had to fight for years to have their own facilities like locker rooms, bathrooms, and showers, after suffering regular harassment in previously shared spaces. Such are the gains that the radicalized portion of the trans-rights movement wants to roll back. Generations of feminists have made it their life’s work to help women feel safe in historically male spaces. But in the name of ideological fashion, that has been flushed away in the name of male demands for “inclusivity.”

In May, nine homeless women signed on to a lawsuit against Naomi’s House in Fresno, California, after they were forced to shower with a biological man who, while claiming to be a woman, made lewd, sexually inappropriate comments to them, and leered at their naked bodies. In Toronto, similarly, Kristi Hanna filed a human rights complaint against the Jean Tweed Centre, which runs Palmerston House, a shelter for female recovering addicts, after she was told she must share a room with a hulking, plainly male-bodied individual claiming to be a woman.

Beyond being allowed access to this ostensibly female-only facility, this biological male was given special treatment, on account of claimed transgenderism, jumping ahead of two women on the wait list, according to Hanna. Complaints to the staff about his presence were met with the mantra, “We’re inclusive.” Hanna, who has been sexually assaulted multiple times by men, suffers from PTSD and insomnia, on top of struggling with substance abuse issues. After the man’s arrival, she stayed in the room two nights, but felt so unsafe (I use the term here in its literal sense) that she was unable to sleep, and decamped for her sister’s house. “Why don’t my rights matter?” she asked me during a phone interview. “I have a bed there. I pay for that bed. But I can’t go home. I’m barely holding on. I feel so violated.”

In September, the Times of London learned that Natacha Kennedy (also known as Mark Hellen), a researcher at the University of London, had created and circulated a list of academics guilty of failing to subscribe to transgender ideology. According to the newspaper, members of the closed Facebook group, “Trans Rights UK,” through which the list was compiled, “plotted to accuse non-compliant professors of hate crime to try to have them ousted from their jobs,” and targeted a number of university departments because they employed academics who questioned gender-identity dogma. Members of the group, for example, determined that the philosophy department of the University of Sussex was “an unsafe environment” because professor Kathleen Stock had challenged the notion that men could be lesbians. One member of the group reportedly urged: “File a hate-crime report against her, and then the chairman and vice-chair… Drag them over the fucking coals.”

Such tactics may sound hysterical and far-fetched. But they have proven successful in some cases, as I can attest. Last week was not the first time Twitter punished me for criticizing body/mind trans mysticism. I was subjected to multiple suspensions when I noted that a trans-identified biological male and dominatrix in Vancouver who goes by the BDSM name “Hailey Heartless” is actually the same person who led efforts to have a Vancouver rape crisis center and transition house blacklisted and defunded at a 2016 labor union conference (after which this feminist hero was brought on as a speaker at the 2018 Vancouver Women’s March).

The same individual admitted to targeting my website, Feminist Current, by contacting our ad network to complain about our content. As a result, the female-themed website SheKnowspulled all ads from my site, claiming Feminist Current had “failed to comply with the Agreement’s quality guidelines regarding content that attacks a group on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.” This was done, according to the company, because of two articles‚ one challenging the violent, misogynist threats that trans activists aim at women and lesbians, and another questioning the smear tactics that trans activists use to shut down critical questions about the transitioning of children and transgender ideology more broadly.

I asked representatives from SheKnows what material within these posts, specifically, constituted “content that attacks a group on the basis of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity,” but received no reply. Similarly, Twitter failed to respond to my request for evidence that I had violated the platform’s “rules against hateful conduct.” Hailey Heartless—who also is known as Lisa Kreut—has publicly bragged about having a contact at “Twitter safety,” which may explain why Kreut’s complaints are taken seriously. Kreut also was part of a small group that signed an open letter smearing local anti-poverty activist Yuly Chan, demanding she be removed from a panel discussing urban renewal at the Vancouver Crossroads conference. Chan had been invited by conference organizers to speak on behalf of her group, the Chinatown Action Group, which organizes to improve the lives of low-income Chinatown residents, many of whom are seniors. As evidence of Chan’s heretical views, Kreut and others complained that Chan was a supporter of Vancouver Rape Relief (VRR), and that she had indicated opposition to the sex trade. Chan was removed from the panel as a result of these complaints.

Yes, you are reading this correctly: A Vancouver civic leader was removed from a panel about urban renewal because she opposes prostitution and supports the provision of support services for rape victims. This is what the progressive face of the gender-identity cult looks like in 2018.

But it didn’t stop there. Kreut’s putative contact at Twitter also sought to cleanse the web of material defending Chan that was written by third parties. Twitter forced me to remove every single tweet I’d posted about the smear campaign against Chan, and Kreut’s involvement in it, as well as every tweet I’d ever posted mentioning Kreut at all. When I appealed these decisions to Twitter, I got a boilerplate response informing me that the service does “not allow people to promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.” Then again, what should I have expected? Unlike Hailey Heartless, “Western Canada’s Only Transsexual BBW [Big Beautiful Woman] Goddess,” I don’t have any friends working at Twitter.

The Tweet that really seemed to stick under Twitter’s craw was one in which I complained about having been temporarily locked out for two other tweets, one reading, “Men are not women,” and another asking, “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between men and transwomen?” The complaint had gone viral, with over 20,000 likes. Many women who oppose trans ideology and activism can and do stay under Twitter’s radar. But I had become too widely known, and people were paying attention. Someone clearly wanted to find any way to shut me up. Last Friday night, I got an email from Twitter indicating that my account had been deleted permanently. As before, they could not provide me with any evidence that I had posted anything genuinely hateful.

The tweet I was nominally banned for read only, “Yeah, it’s him,” referring to my having been provided with evidence of the real identity of a man the media had referred to only as “JY”—who had been contacting Vancouver-area aestheticians, seeking a “Brazilian bikini wax” for his apparently female-gendered crotch.

When refused, “JY” filed human rights complaints, seeking financial compensation on account of “discrimination.” Twitter informed me that by referring to JY, I had broken an apparently brand new rule banning users from “misgendering” people. But my tweet had been posted two weeks before users and the media had become aware of any change to Twitter’s Terms of Service. Moreover, “JY” was in fact presenting himself as male during much of this period—including using his male name on Twitter, with his “female” name only in brackets.

From what I can tell, it seems likely that “Hailey Heartless” was telling the truth: The dominatrix, and perhaps even “JY,” have contacts at Twitter who were willing to de-platform me for any reason they could muster. And given the stories I’m hearing of other feminists getting banned from Twitter in recent days, this seems to be part of a larger pattern.

Friends sometimes tell me that I shouldn’t worry too much, because Twitter “isn’t real life.” But online fights have an effect on “real life.” Last month, Canada’s Greystone Books, with which I’d been working on a manuscript for almost three years, told me they were dropping my book. The manuscript had just been completed, and I’d agreed to all the suggested edits with regard to the material on transgenderism. The email sent to me by the owner of the company was completely out of the blue, and explained, “I cannot and will not accept a manuscript for publication at Greystone which is hurtful to individuals or groups because of what they believe about their own gender.” When I responded with shock and confusion, he declined to explain what it was about my analysis that suddenly had become “unacceptable” to him. Presumably, he was just late getting the memo about “TERFs.”

We are indeed in an era of social panic. But this panic isn’t directed at trans-identified individuals, who, in fact, are now called on to lead parades. Rather, the panic is directed at anyone who claims that 2 + 2 = 4. After stickers with the words, “Women don’t have penises” appeared on campus at Memorial University in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Jennifer Dyer, interim head of the gender studies department, blamed “TERFs.” And university president Gary Kachanoski responded immediately with a statement that called the stickers “transphobic” and “hateful.” Bailey Howard, director of external affairs for the Student Union, said that not one, but two meetings were being planned to “discuss next steps.” An anchor for NTV, Newfoundland’s provincial news program, labeled it a “hate crime.” All of this hysteria was set in motion by a set of stickers that express a sentiment endorsed, at least privately, by most members of our society. It feels like a Monty Python sketch come to life.

I was angry to have lost a Twitter account with tens of thousands of followers. I was angry to have lost a book deal. But I will recover. I am resilient, if nothing else. I will find another publisher and other ways to communicate with the public. I have countless supporters, and my career is far from over. Certainly, I don’t plan on shutting up.

But this isn’t just about me. It’s about a cultish movement that is flexing its muscle on campuses, in civic organizations, at public events, and in the back offices of social-media companies, to strike down anyone who dares point out that the gender emperor wears no clothes. It is about our ability to debate important issues and speak the truth in the public realm. It’s time for all of us—not just women and feminists, who are now taking the worst of it—to put their collective foot down and demand a return to sanity.

Meghan Murphy is a writer from Vancouver, Canada. Her website is Feminist Current.

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398 Comments

Men are not women. That’s the clear obvious biological truth. To suggest otherwise is mass hysteria and confusing ‘self’ identify with reality and biology. It is not hate speech to speak the truth about biology. How insulting to women and clearly medially and biologically wrong to suggest that a man who has testes and a penis, is a woman. They ‘identify’ as a woman. It doesn’t make it so.

I would say that one of the biggest problems with the transgender movement is that it relies on the idea that there is no difference between “I am” and “I identify with” : in that respect, it heavily draws on the postmodernist idea that reality is shaped by language.

“…it heavily draws on the postmodernist idea that reality is shaped by language.”

This is actually one of the most ancient ideas of humanity: “In the beginning was the Word…” Post-modernism (at least in its more extreme branches) is really just the reincarnation of the priestly class in secular form with the academy as their “Church”. The tension between rationality (language as a tool for reflection) and religiosity (language as a tool for creation) is present in every society, with most throughout history being tipped decidedly in favor of the latter.

The ancient Egyptians were especially suffused with this psychology, with the “word” being everything to them: a single misspelled inscription on a pharaoh’s tomb meant disaster for that unfortunate monarch’s prospects in the afterlife. Even the lower classes played the game with entire professions being dedicated to producing droves of incantations, spells, and amulets to ward off evils and illnesses.

Even distilled down to modern secular entertainment (i.e. magicians, illusionists, hypnotists) it maintains this characteristic where uttering the magical phrase (“abra cadabra”, “open sesame”) at the crucial moment is still the main requirement for “success”.

It unfortunately seems to be our default psychology, being formed in pre-scientific ages where filling the void of reality was an emotional and psychological need. To have been able to ask all the questions about reality but have no means of answering them was met with an indomitable will to fill the “gaps” and stave off an existential crisis. (Trying to answer what Nietzsche called the great “in vain!” behind all our efforts.)

It would be fair to say, when considering our entire history, that rationality is the radical and rebellious attitude and that what we are perhaps witnessing today (or have been for a few decades) is the first stages of the demise of our modern rational rebellion and a slow collapse back into our prior, more “magical”, outlook on reality. Essentially the same fate that overtook the classical world.

This rejection of rationality was an essential part of the hippie movement and is openly promoted by “studies” profs. Rationality is too hard and forces you to accept unpleasant realities–so much better to just base things on feels. Of course that leads to inquisitions and mob rule…

Men are not women? It depends on what you mean. Do you mean ALL men are not women? Again, it depends on what you mean. Do you mean all men with XY chromosomes and male biological sexual characteristics are not women? That also depends on what you mean. Do you mean all men with XY chromosomes and male biological sexual characteristics feel themselves psychologically to be males? If so, then you are factually wrong. There are men with XY chromosomes and male biological sexual characteristic who feel themselves psychologically to be women. Don’t let the activities of a small group of thugs blind you to the facts.

I am not trans but I know someone, now in her late sixties, who has XY genotype and was born with male phenotype but who felt psychologically that she was a woman, and who spent a lifetime firstly coming to terms with this herself, and then trying to gain acceptance by family and friends, finally migrating here when all else failed, getting hormonal treatment, psychiatric and psychological treatment, and eventually sex reassignment surgery, and only recently succeeding in having her birth certificate changed to female. Finally at peace with herself and the world in her late sixties. Maybe give her a thought when you make statements that are true in general but can be totally wrong in the particular.

DD:
You seem to have missed my point. There is a very small percentage of people whose gender (what they feel psychologically to be) is different from their genetic sex (XX or XY chromosomes) and their biological sex (physical sexual characteristics).

Isiah Berlin Wall:
Firstly something cannot be true in the particular and TOTALLY wrong in general. To use the phrase “in general” actually means it does not apply in all cases.
But I agree with you about some forms of modern trans-activism. It is counterproductive to alienate people who would otherwise tend to support your cause and this is what they are doing. But not all trans people are like that. You would like my friend. Everyone does, though only a few of us know her story.

benita canova:
All medical professionals including psychiatrists and psychologist know that they must first eclude a medical condition before concluding their patient has a mental illness. The person I wrote about has been in a stable relationship with her male partner for over two decades. They migrated here to start a new life together.

“Maybe give her a thought when you make statements that are true in general but can be totally wrong in the particular.”

While I agree that empathy in situations like this should be a prerequisite of civilised behaviour, the problem with transactivism in its current form is the exact inverse of your words quoted above, based as it is on “statements that can be true in the particular but are totally wrong in general.”

Point of fact, the word “psychologically” here is redundant as all things that are “felt” in the mind are by definition psychological. They also do not presuppose reality. Some people with XY chromosomes think they are the second coming of Jesus. That doesn’t make it so.

It also presupposes that there are some sort of set parameters that shape what a woman “feels” psychologically?

What does that even mean? He cried when he watched the notebook therefore he’s a woman?

More questions… Given cultural variations in gender roles, were his feelings those of an American woman? What if he’s really a Korean man on the inside?

I don’t begrudge people doing what makes them happy so long as it does not impose on the rights of others. But lets not conflate this exception to the rule as a valid repudiation of the reality.

Some people are terrified of plants (psychologically). If you remove the plants from their home, they will feel better. This doesn’t make any of it rational or particularly healthy.

To conclude… feeling something psychologically is not a valid affirmation of reality… or anything… at all… ever.

Well then leave off either the “feeling” part, or the “psychological” part of the phrase “feeling psychologically” if disturbs you so much. In fact, “feeling” can be either emotional or psychological, or a combination of the two, but nevermind.

He cried therefore he is a woman? How about: this person has a sexual attraction for men and likes to wear dresses and makeup, and therefore it is likely this person feels like a woman.

The rest of your argument reduces to “people have phobias and suffer hallucinations, therefore transgenderism is an illusion”. That’s a pretty poor argument.

It is not a small group. These men who “identify as women” troll women and are abusive and violent also. They have attacked and mobbed, feminists, mothers, teen girls (Jonathan Yaniv the man who got MM banned has a deep interest in young teens and tampax) He has more rights and protections than the girls he trolls. Why because he is a man. Women give birth to dead babies and you pity trawl for some guy who wanted cosmetic surgery and was depressed–come on.

Men that idenify as women get plays shut down, classes cancelled, people banned and harassed, they get women fired. They harass girls. The contact kids on line behind the parents back. They monster people and mob them. I am glad a man found peace, High drama, he suffered so because he felt bad or sad or whatever. He is a man.

Look at all the attention they command and they power they weild to harm women and kids. Compasion is just a con game and a manipulation.

Jonathan Yaniv had special human right to get his balls waxed. To take 16 women up on charges. And he is just one man that identifies as a woman. And Trans Inc rallied to his aid They aided a man that trolls 11 year old girls in public toilets. They clearly had no problem with that idea. Oh and these abusive men will get worse because antisocial male sexual behavior escalates. I am giving your 60 year old friend a thought. Here: He has never lived one nano second as a woman and he has no right to demand I think of him. Let him cry the blues to other men and leave women alone, leave our books alone, leave our plays alone, leave our bathrooms. They are men. Do not play the compasion manipulation it has worn thin.

What you, and the whole of the brainwashed left, are falling for here is the fallacy that the person’s “feelings” represent reality. That gender is a “feeling” construct rather than a summation of concrete experiences. No woman has ever possessed a penis, for a start, or experienced the explosive kind of orgasm that a prostate gland provides. Therefore, how does someone with a penis “feel” that they are a woman, when already they have something that a real woman does not? Secondly, how does a man who had not experienced adolescence, with the growth of breast ductal material that is erogenous, often orgasmic, “feel” that they know what that is like? Yes, HRT might give them a small understanding of the physiology but not what it like at the age of 8-11. What about kissing a heterosexual boy for the first time at adolescence? These “feelings” are at best vicarious, gained through readings of female writers and in no way represent the concrete experience or real girls.

What about socialisation? Girls grow up together, experiement with hair, fashion, cosmetics, discuss their experiences with boys, what they read,what they do. A whole host, a quarter of a lifetime’s experiences are denied to the transwoman, particularly those who start AFTER they have had a wife and children and decide they have “always felt they are women” in their fifties!

For God’s sake, please tell me: Is it possible to “feel” yourself as a horse? As a black person if you are white? Suppose you are an uncircumcised male at the age of 50 and decided that you have felt yourself to be a Jew all your life?

This is a mental illness. There are people who elect to have amputation because they “feel” they have the wrong number of limbs!

The Western world is managing to get itself into the state of Rome before it crumbled. We have to regain our common sense now.

Gender ideology It is an opression in many ways, it is an opression against rational thinking, it is an opression against human body by mutilation, an opression against kids and parents and a monstrous opression against women.

We should recognise that Ms Murphy and others in her radfem cohort are at peace with the concept of hate speech and the existence hate speech laws used to suppress speech – see her talk with Youtuber Benjamin Boyce for her admission of this. Their objection is when such laws and policies are used against them. “Zoinks! We never foresaw that happening.”

Oh well, the Road to Damascus is a long one for some.

It’s time for all of us—not just women and feminists, who are now taking the worst of it—to put their collective foot down and demand a return to sanity.

I certainly hope the radfems return to sanity too. I support this effort. Best wishes to you all.

Agreed, the feminists lit the fuse, but at least they had cause, as did the campaigners for gay rights. Schadenfreude is all well and good, but the coming storm may yet engulf us all before it dies down.

@ Steve Crook
Yes, but the cause, as originally conceived, was for Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation – and even, in political cases, National Liberation. All Liberation movements. This current mutation on the original is repressive, authoritarian and, frankly, joyless. The exact opposite of the spirit of those movements. These are not liberating, but stultifying, repressive expressions of something very ugly.
I understand the writer’s frustration with the tactics and the nastiness, but I can just as easily point to those very same manifestations of ‘religious’ intolerance towards anyone who has been warning about the authoritarian tendencies of the ‘social justice’ movement for the past few years. Maybe the trans issue will be the one that finally breaks through. It’s an unedifying spectacle – but at least it is now exposing the contradictions and irrationality at the heart. Not before time. ‘Equity’ feminists have had enough of the abuse and the debasing of what used to be a genuine reform movement.
For everyone’s sake, it has to stop – and I hope it doesn’t take that engulfing storm to do it. Too many people have worked too hard for tangible gains over decades…..

@frances
I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that. What kind of person goes on an anonymous comments board and hurls one-liner sarcasm at strangers?

I am going to go out and get a life, hobbies, some people to love so that I don’t feel so bitter and catty. I mean, I could be volunteering helping the homeless rather than trying to correct the “wrong think” of who-knows-who on the interwebs.

I can be better, and I will be. I will give forgiveness, and I will ask it, though not demand it. I will be a one-woman revolution of kindness. Let’s do this!

Anyone and everyone can claim a cause and orchestrate an appeal. It’s how they go about conducting it and, very importantly to me, what attacks on speech, if any, they are making and the demand it be suppressed.

The radfems should be no strangers to laws and policies they fought for and won being used against them soon thereafter. In the early ’90s they campaigned against “pornography” in Canada, winning a Supreme Court ruling in ’92 which adopted a radical feminist argument, written in part by Catherine MacKinnon, against pornography.

The first to feel the power of the state enforcing the law was a small lesbian magazine; it’s distribution was banned. The radfems tripped themselves up and to oppose the enforcement of the law they had just crafted they proclaimed the lesbian magazine was permissible erotica and not pornography. Too late. The authorities weren’t buying it. Customs officials were stopping US-published material at the border including the radfem Andrea Dworkin’s antiporn polemic Pornography. Oh, the irony of it all. The owner of an LGBT bookshop was prosecuted on obscenity charges for selling the lesbian magazine Bad Attitude. Canadian laws and the police enforcement did not distinguish between different kinds of representations: words, sounds, drawings, and photographs could all be prosecuted as obscenity. The court left the catchall definitions of these crimes so imprecise that police and local prosecutors could go after almost anything to do with sex.

I think we have to acknowledge that within any large movement there are the monomanical zealots who ruin it for everyone, including themselves. It’s smash and destroy. Burn it all down. ‘It’ is usually the bogeyman called ‘the Patriarchy’ and all of its attendant systems and institutions. Amongst the left presently the radfems are one such group and the gendertrenders are another. There’s no reasoning with them until they reform themselves.

Confusion between fantasy and reality goes to the heart of the current madness. There is a metaphysical trans person or metaphysical woman out there whom people such as activists and allies seek to protect from the harm of ‘violent’ words, thoughts, and even glances. Don’t be surprised when one’s mere presence is condemned as hateful and violent – whoops, spoke too late, it happened at VidCon 2017 when a group of misogynists sat quietly in chairs. The victim isn’t a particular person, but rather a ‘community’ that has been ‘denied dignity’, their ‘humanity erased’. They are ‘silenced’ if you don’t meekly submit and comply with their directives.

The vast majority of women who can see the lunacy of gender identity politics do not identify as feminists. Women, and even many men, who can see the insanity of it all, cross the political spectrum from ordinary housewife to so-called “radical feminist”. My sister doesn’t call herself a feminist, and she gets it. There are some things that unite all women, and the harm that gender identity politics does to the female sex is one of them.

There is a group of women called ‘Hands Across the Aisle Coalition’ that is comprised of conservative women and liberal women. Opposition to transgender insanity is coming from all women, and it spans the political spectrum. So called “radical feminists” are the type of women who speak their minds. For this, they are reviled the most.

Ga gamba you make good points as always. I’d like to point out only that women’s rights were lacking for women in the real world and fought for by women in the real world. The problems started when academics got involved. The same with other movements. MLK was a preacher helping right real wrongs. Tasneezy Coates is an overly educated charlatan creating imaginary problems.

Catherine Mckinnon and Dworkin didnt have the funding these transgender activists do. Something is rotten in denmark, either the LGBTQ is power hungry beyond their modus operandi or there are very wealthy people like Jennifer Pritzker engaged in a social engineering machine to establish new voting blocks via the naiveté of millennials

“The Feminists had cause”. What is the objective standard where feminists had cause to censor “hate speech”, but trans activists don’t? Is it because trans activists, not being “real” women, are also not “real” victims? Who gets to decide?

A perusal of Murphy’s website has me wondering if she’s not been guilty of:

1) shutting down nuanced debate by yelling “patriarchy!”, and…
2) interpreting everything in the world around her through the singular lens of misogyny. In other words, if you disagree with her, it’s because you’re a de facto misogynist.

Now she’s up against people that are:
1) shutting down her nuanced debate (and twitter accounts) by yelling “TERF!” and,
2) interpreting everything in the world around them through the lens of transphobia. Despite the fact that she says, “I do not hate trans-identified individuals”, they all seem to know that she is, in fact, transphobic.

I hope I’m wrong about her, but her master degree in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies seems further evidence that she’s heavily indoctrinated in Critical Theory and SJW tactics.

Perhaps this episode will allow Murphy to step back and get a clear view of the pot and the kettle, which are both very black. An enemy of my enemy isn’t necessarily my friend, but if she showed an interest is joining those of us in the middle, I’d be the first to extend her a hand of fellowship.

Actually, that is not so. Feminists have managed to have even the president of Harvard fired, for supporting the ‘greater variability hypothesis’. Perhaps that theory is right, perhaps it is wrong. But it is a theory that can be supported by evidence. And yet, if a theory is against any feminist theory, feminists will lobby to have the person accused of misogyny and be fired.

Thanks for the input, Radiant. Indeed. There was an article posted on this very website just a few days ago about a male university professor that was censured for refusing to apologize for offending a female gender studies professor. His crime? Asking to get off of an elevator on the floor where “ladies lingerie” is sold. Basically, a dad joke referencing an old British sitcom. His joke was labelled misogynist and his academic record tarnished by a radfem with no sense of context, history, or humor. Then, he had the audacity to reach out to her in an attempt to dialog – which got him censured again.

No, but feminists are responsible, directly or indirectly, for the fall in birth rate that is giving the globalists the excuse to push massive immigration from 3rd world hell holes to replace us. Please google UN Global Migration Compact. NB the word “regular”. NB also that any protest against massive immigration is deemed hate speech and must be curtailed.

The ends justify the means for the political cultists. Radfem cultists are merely experiencing some richly deserved karmic blowback. They won’t learn from the experience nor will they temper their more authoritarian views and tactics as a result.

@Bread, re ‘the ends justifying the means…’ I agree with the sentiment stated, but I’m curious; are you actually sure that the author is guilty of this behavior? I personally am not familiar with her other work, so I don’t actually know one way or the other, and maybe she is, but you haven’t referenced this behavior directly, but rather a stereotype of ‘this kind of person’.

So, I’m wondering, do the ends justify the means for you? In case I am unclear in what I am saying: Is it ok, in the name of eradicating the pathological PC behavior you describe, to accuse individual’s of this behavior because they have an identity that is associated with the groups that tend to that behavior? In other words, is it ok for you to use the same tactics that you disdain in the name your own good cause?

If you happen to know something about this person that backs up your comment, please share it with us.

“There is a reason certain spaces are sex-segregated—such as change rooms, bathrooms, women’s shelters, and prisons: because these are spaces where women are vulnerable, and where male predators might target women and girls. These are spaces where women and girls may be naked, and where they do not want to be exposed to a man’s penis, regardless of his insistence that his penis is actually “female.”

Most sensible quote in the entire piece, the original “safe space”.

I find it somewhat disappointing that some to chose to revel in the injustices done to this woman. True she may have contributed to the problem that now consumes her. However a position on the on the rightness or wrongfulness of a predicament conditioned on the politics of one of the parties, is Leftist thinking. Regardless of whether she does or does not invoke sympathy, one must be true to one’s ideals. Fungible or flexible principles should not become a hallmark of the Right. The Left has well staked out that territory, let them have it.

Exactly so. The radfems now find themselves on the other side of the Oppressor/Victim divide and they seem not to like the very regime that they created. Yes, sanity would be very nice, it’s been too long away, but it is the radfems that banished it.

Radfems are bad people. Okay, fair enough. Therefore, ALL women including Ray’s sister, mother, daughter, grandmother, aunt, etc. have to share a women’s locker room with a 6’2″ 200 lb. transwoman. Because there are some women who might be ‘radfems’, and radfems make up about 5% of the female population, traumatized homeless women who have been raped, have to bunk down next to biological males, male genitalia intact, in women’s homeless shelters. Were Christopher, “Jessica”, Hambrooks victims ‘radfems’? He is the sex predator who gained access to two different women’s homeless shelters in Toronto by saying he was transgender. Were transwoman serial killer Douglas, “Donna”, Perry’s victims ‘radfems’? I seriously doubt it. They were women who worked as prostitutes whose dead bodies were dumped by the roadside. How about the 13 year old black girl that transwoman Synthia, China, Blast was convicted of helping to murder? Was she a ‘radfem’. I bet the girls that transwoman registered sex offender Paul, “Paula”, Witherspoon molested were ‘radfems’.

Came here to say this. The irony is that she’s not upset with the methods of shame, intimidation used to get what she wants, or the use of government to force her wishes. She’s upset that someone else is doing the same thing against her. This is the hole the far left has created. They abandoned the goals of individual freedom and liberty in practice, which they espoused when it served their particular interests, and now the chickens (both roosters and hens) are coming home to roost. Individual freedoms serve to protect individuals when their desires at not the majority, and over time, everyone at some point is on the outside looking in.

Some of us have been saying 2+2=4 for decades now, calling for objectivity in matters of public discourse. We were told to shut up, that the end justifies the means, because _______ have been so oppressed.

Some of us have been saying for years that Twitter is a sewer, an arbitrary vortex of stupidity and compulsive behavior; that anyone who joins it or participates on the platform empowers and enriches a bunch of zealots in the Valley, who will wind up controlling discourse with their “woke law.”

We explained to anyone who would listen–and there were few–that they should join and encourage platforms where one can say anything that is legally permissible anywhere else in public discourse (“I am going to murder ______”? No. “This person is a cunt/nigger”? Yes, even if it’s a despicable, small-minded thing to say to anyone at any time). We were told, “Don’t be reactionary! Muzzling the mean people is okay, because we don’t need them. And the sanitization means we can get our message out to so many people.”

Some of us have been saying for a long time that the farrago of ideologies of the Left would inevitably turn into a dog fight; that pro-woman (I refuse to say “feminist” now) and LGB should not be joined with T, because the last is a neuropsychological condition similar to anorexia that often leads patients to incredibly bizarre thinking and behavior outside their control, rather than a standard variation in sexual orientation in an otherwise normal-thinking person. We were told, “You are full of hate!” (And this was before calling people “full of hate” was cool.)

Now, some of us are buying firearms. I have never been a firearm enthusiast or owner before, but I just got my conceal-carry permit. I consider it my civic duty. Any black-bloc Left fundamentalist who places his hands on me or mine will get the last big surprise of his misbegotten life. Some of us believe that’s where we could be headed.

Go ahead, say it: “This time, your concerns are overblown! Your atavistic Second Amendment is a disgrace. Nobody should have guns. Toxic masculinity! In Canada we are better. We will just talk at people more.”

Maybe that’s right. Maybe this time, “some of us” have got it wrong. Or maybe in the near future, you will have black-clad vandals screaming outside your house in the dark spray-painting “TERF” on your door and demanding you get out of town by dawn. Maybe the police won’t do their job because they are afraid of blowback from bloodthirsty activists and punishment in the media.

2 + 2 = 4, the same way males are not women, and women have been oppressed by men for millennia. 3 examples of undeniable facts.

I know men would prefer all women stay quiet and accept a subservient role in society instead of rebelling, but I thought ring-wing and conservative people were rational and logical. Isn’t that what you people always say?

This makes no sense.
Collective responsibility is not a right-wing belief. Many right-wing people believe in individual rights, individual merit, and individual responsibility. Women’s millennia-long oppression at the hands of men cannot be blamed on modern men, unless those men are practically immortal. Moreover, most women alive today have not been oppressed for millennia either, unless they are exceptionally long-lived.
This is the rational and logical position.
Moreover, rebellion is not treasured by right-wing people for its own sake, but only in intolerable circumstances and after other possibilities for redress have been exhausted. The original position that gives the “right wing” its name was even against the French Revolution.
There is no reason for conservatives to support women’s “rebellion”. The usual methods for advancing one’s goals in a democratic society seem to be working and there is no special need for “rebellion”.
So maybe you are confusing conservatives with anarchists, who believe in rebellion for its own sake, because it’s “cool”. Either that or you have no idea what right-wing and conservative people think.

@Monica, I’m a woman and have no idea what you’re talking about. “Men would prefer all women stay quiet and accept a subservient role…” Says who? You? What men? Where are your stats? Or do you just “know”? Most men I know would not like that, or would like give and take and fluidity in the relationship. It’s not a zero sum game. One person’s ‘oppression’ is not another person’s ‘oppressorship’. It’s far far more complex and fluid than that.

I am not ‘right-wing’ or ‘conservative’ either – I voted straight Dem for decades. But I can no longer do so because of this unscientific dogma-based quasi religious victimhood mentality particularly about women.

“Women have been oppressed by men for millennia” is not an example of an ‘undeniable fact.” Or are you willing to say women have also been oppressed by other women for millennia? And men have been oppressed by women for millennia (if by ‘oppressed’ you acknowledge the disposable attitude toward men’s lives in war and hunting and work)? By denying women agency you infantilize us. We have agency. Yes, for sure, there are cultures in which women have it far worse than others. I would not want to live, for instance, in Saudi Arabia.

But that doesn’t mean that all women across all cultures and ages have been uniformly ‘oppressed’ by men in a passive, childlike way as your language suggests, nor does it mean women take no part in each others’ oppression, nor does it mean the ‘oppression’ is uniform and zero sum.

Of course if you view the world through a simplistic dogmatic reductionist lens, you will see only simplicity and confirmation bias where complexity lives. It may make your life more meaningful, or at least simpler. But not for me.

Actually there are 2 million gun owners in Canada. They are in factquite popular, with more people shooting than playing hockey. We just can’t carry them around, and of course the ignorantly bigoted intelligentsia does not like them.

“Waitaminute! When we throw open the doors to change society’s norms quickly and indiscriminately, those ideas can go in a CRAZY and DESTRUCTIVE direction too?! Social conservatism isn’t always pure evil? Oh dear…”

Seeing political cultists whinge about the fire they started coming back to burn them is ironic to say the least. Alas the radfem cultists will learn nothing from it. They’ll advocate just as many authoritarian policies as they always have. The ends justify the means.for the political cults. I’m fine with karma doing it’s slow yet thorough work.

If you don’t like the idea of changing society norms, what are you doing here, Giselle? Don’t you know women are supposed to be silent? Why do you think you have a right to share your opinion here? Are you in the kitchen right now? If you are not, stop commenting and go back to the kitchen where you belong, woman.

I bet you have a bank account in your name. Women like you really need to stop being hypocrites, Giselle.

@Monica, hahaha. You can’t even respond to my points. Like a spoiled child, you break down into a tantrum. In the most vicious sexist way. What a hypocrite. And you proved my point by the way about women keeping other women down.

According to you, I am an ‘ignorant stupid cunt.” Hmm, the man who raped me called me this. But Monica, you really really don’t care about sexism and violence against women at all, do you? You seem to care purely about ideology and dogma. And the second it is threatened in any way, out comes the vicious sexist insults.

You called me a ‘stupid cunt” for daring to challenge your assumptions. You said “don’t you dare” as though to threaten me. You don’t bring out a single fact. You don’t trot out historical analysis. This is what infantalizing does. It renders the person incapable of anything except screaming and tantruming. You are a perfect example of what I’m talking about.

And I’m not a “Republicunt.” What a vicious sexist pun. Which you deem ok when *you* use it? Women attacking women…. Why do you assume that anyone against you must ipso facto vote for the Other political party? Dogma. Indoctrination. Infantilization.

What’s so wrong about that kitchen, Monica? Look at the Italian mama,s, and their agelong tradition of kitchen knowledge and art, and civilisation, and what the youngsters there now prefer, some silly, stupid paid job in a lab or office for some even stupider boss. How come? What the hell nonsense is this? But it’s going on and on and on. Unbelievable, but true.

If we draw an equivalancy between voting and democracy, we can perhaps create a hypothesis of sorts regarding the oppression of one group or another when it comes to voting rights.

The frist Democracy is widely considered to be that of Athens. Bear in mind that even in ancient Athens, voting was highly restricted. Even so, democracy in Athens ends after Sparta’s victory in the Peloponnesian War around 400bc. This is of course debateable but let’s just asume it’s close enough.

In regards to the United States, voting was highly restricted after inde[endence. The first election to allow universal male (white) suffrage when it came to voting on the President of the United States was 1828. This gives us a gap of about 2228 years. Thus we might say that it took men 2228 years to recapture the right to vote.

Suffrage for women was achieved in the United States in 1920. This would igve us a gap of 2320. Thus we might likewise conclude that it took women 2320 years to gain the right to vote.

The difference between the two is 92 years. Or roughly a difference of 4%.

This 4% is what you are generally referring to as evidence oppression. (At least when it comes to voting)

The truth, is that democracy is fairly new in World History and it took an extraordinary chain of activism stretching back for centuries for even one group to earn the right to vote. Granted it was not achieved for all groups at the same time, but the relative difference is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.

It’s not just the feminists’ support for hate speech prohibitions and the like that make this so ironic: for 40+ years feminists have claimed gender is a social construct; that biology plays no role in behavior; and, that there are thus no specific male or female roles (and ultimately no fundamental differences between the sexes – except for the obvious physical ones). At least, though, they recognized the physical differences and recognized that one was either male or female. However, the entire sex-gender division started with them. And if there’s no fundamental difference between the sexes other than the physical, it’s the same as saying that there’s neither male nor female except in the narrowest sense. “Gender” is thus whatever one wants it to be. The trams people simply took the feminist premise to it’s logical conclusion.

Gender IS a social construct. Sex is not. Feminists never said there are no sex differences. Men doesn’t become women (sex) because they like to wear high heels (gender). What’s so hard for you to understand?

No. The fact is that gender and sex overlap to such a degree they aren’t really able to be separated. To claim otherwise is simply ignorant. Or ideological if you wish to put forth an argument that pretends otherwise.

Meghan Murphy’s commitment to free speech is skin deep, and if you go back a few short years, you’ll find her floating the idea of defamation lawsuits against a journalist for writing an article critical of her, or claiming that male critics on Twitter were “threatening” her in much the same way that the “words are violence” trans activists now go after her. This current spat goes back to her trying to deplatform a trans dominatrix from the Vancouver Women’s March, the kind of thing that she was quick to call censorship when sex worker activists wanted Rabble.ca to deplatform her.

Leftists use free speech as a weapon against their enemies, and censorship as a weapon against their enemies. There is no principle here; just whatever suits me at the time.

Some leftists may seem to oppose technology, but they will oppose it only so long as they are outsiders and the technological system is controlled by non-leftists. If leftism ever becomes dominant in society, so that the technological system becomes a tool in the hands of leftists, they will enthusiastically use it and promote its growth. In doing this they will be repeating a pattern that leftism has shown again and again in the past. When the Bolsheviks in Russia were outsiders, they vigorously opposed censorship and the secret police, they advocated self-determination for ethnic minorities, and so forth; but as soon as they came into power themselves, they imposed a tighter censorship and created a more ruthless secret police than any that had existed under the tsars, and they oppressed ethnic minorities at least as much as the tsars had done. In the United States, a couple of decades ago when leftists were a minority in our universities, leftist professors were vigorous proponents of academic freedom, but today, in those of our universities where leftists have become dominant, they have shown themselves ready to take away from everyone else’s academic freedom. (This is “political correctness.”) The same will happen with leftists and technology: They will use it to oppress everyone else if they ever get it under their own control.

Can’t say I feel sorry for the author. If I were to say something as logically mundane as “there are differences between the sexes”, many of the ilk with which she identifies (feminists) would make minced meat of me and demand I be banned too. Feminism in general, TERF or otherwise is populism for left leaning women, and like every form of populism, nothing tantalises more than watch the very authoritarian mechanisms they have facilitated gobble them up.

Feminists never said there are no sex differences. Unless you are talking about people saying “sex differences” is what makes men capable of occupying leadership positions, for example, unlike women. Or that women are not fit to be scientists because of “sex differences”. Just say you hate women and go.

“Just say you hate women and go.” Ah, the classic slur of the dogmatic and religious. Other people’s arguments couldn’t be based on reason, and there certainly could not be a mistake or misunderstanding or her part. It is only because the other person is inherently evil that they do not ascribe to the ideology/word of god.

“Just say you hate women and go.” I agree, @Defenstrator, this is ideology talking. What’s interesting to me about Monica’s comments is that a) she defines ‘leadership positions’ from a male lens, when in fact there are many cultures in which women occupy strong leadership positions from within the framework that is important to us. For instance, women may rule the home across generations. Only if you discount the home (I mean three-four generations of it) as irrelevant or unimportant can you conclude that that form of leadership is unimportant, which is a male-centric view. And b) that she sees a disproportionate number of men in the leadership positions she feels are important, and concludes, without data, that this is obviously due to a male hegemony monolithically keeping women in their place, that this has nothing to do with women’s own wishes and desires, nor with women keeping other women in their place, even as she herself leaps to doing so when you question her (she immediately called me a ‘cunt” the second I questioned her, as opposed to logically debating me, using the age-old female method of keeping out-of-line women in their proper place according to the dominant woman with vicious sexism, thus excellently proving my own point)

Monica: Men are far more willing to kill other human beings. Men are more dangerous. Men are more unpredictable. When a man exhibits qualities of understanding, thoughtfulness and vision, combined with the quality of being imposing and dominating, he is elected as a leader. By men and women.

Your profanity-laced two sentence comments are the kind of bummer that I hoped not to have to see reading Quillette and avoiding twitter.

I was dismayed when, in 2015 a man, Kaitlyn Jenner was named woman of the year, and I didn’t here a peep from so called feminists. Well the Patriarchy is alive and well I thought.
Now so called progressives are giving legal and moral coverage to sexual predators, which really sets my mind spinning.
Men now compete with women at certain sports where their decidedly male bodies give them a great advantage, and they shamelessly smile on the winner’s platform.
I used to be indifferent to men who desire to be called her or she. But now I make a point of it.
As a society we finally started to right the wrongs of our highly patriarchal history and we all benefited from it greatly.
The transgender movement is misogynist much like the disturbing trend of some parents who try to change feminine boy into little girls are homophobic.
Ms. Murphy’s refusal to accept what is to most people outside of these activists groups, clearly illogical and sometimes dangerous, is heartening.

Do you mean you would address every transgendered individual by their genitally correct pronoun? I wouldn’t do that, because an individual shouldn’t be made liable for the idiocy of a movement that claims to represent them. Many transgendered people suffer from the gap between their biology and their feelings about themselves, and we should be considerate. That doesn’t mean not pushing back in the insanity of the new trans activists.
A masculist and men’s right advocate

That “sweetheart.” Again, another example of @Monica leaping to sexist condescension and put-downs the very second another woman steps out of line. It’s laughable and sad how much of a parody she is about herself.

Your husband sound like a POS. The fact that there are so many women like you who are happy to be with POS like your husband is one of the reasons women are still fighting for basic things in 2018. Sad.

Yeah, because saying a little joke makes you a piece of shit? What do you call a person who calls random people pieces of shit then? It must be even harsher.

And no, women in the West aren’t “still fighting for basic things in 2018”. Wrong. The fact that you have the time and effort to waste on being offended because of a silly joke means you are not as oppressed as you believe.

@Sara Dip If you are American you don’t even have paid maternity leave. Your rapist president put a rapist in the Supreme Court weeks ago, and they WILL take away legal access to abortion. It’s only a matter of time. Stop thinking women only have a right to be complain and be angry when they are being burned alive for being raped in those shitholes you can’t find on a map. Men rule over you and they will continue to do so. Do you know why? Because there are too many passive conformist subservient bitches like you in the world. Sad.

That reminds me,Monica, in the NL, some black ( so she cals herself, and presents herself in hair style) professor stigmatising all white people of being discriminatory and racist, whether they are aware of it or not, doesn’t matter. So, a parallel with your man/woman relation. Is it possible by sociological or scientific enquire to find out whether these statements are wrong or the truth? Of course not, by definition not.

I have 2 children. I got paid maternity leaves with both of them – one from a corporation, one from a small business. And not everyone believes it would be a terrible thing if it were illegal for mothers to kill their own children.

“It’s time for all of us—not just women and feminists, who are now taking the worst of it—to put their collective foot down and demand a return to sanity.”

How have women and feminists got it the worst? A nasty pejorative label has been fabricated to delegitimise feminist critique of the trans-movement. Alright. It can now join the cluster of overused bigot agent-nouns that are frequently used to suppress discussion: racist, sexist, homophobic, ableist, etc. The faux pas that warrants job-termination and silencing is wrongthink, which anybody is in danger of, not just women.

Trans-activists apply the sanctity principle but to a different axiom: I am a woman because I claim woman-status. Radically feminists mercilessly employed ‘misogynist’ to deflect sincere criticism; the trans-activists are using ‘TERF’.

I don’t know if Meghan herself has been illiberal, but her allies in the radical feminist movement have been. That said, it would be churlish not to support her and others who base their feminism in biology and free speech.

If you can’t tolerate criticism or humour directed at your ideas, you’re not fit to participate in the conversation.

@Monica All of us are quite well-acquainted with feminism’s long, well-documented history of man-hating. We don’t need a refresher in the middle of these comments. You can spew your vile filth all you want and nobody will become enlightened.

Too late. I think the well-documented history of women’s oppression by men gives women every right to hate men as much as we want. Especially when men not only deny that history, but also do everything they can to continue to make women’s lives worse worldwide. You all make me sick.

Declan, don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not a third wave feminist. I’m a radical feminist, like Meghan. Two very different things. And don’t worry about my happiness. I will do everything that I can to make men as miserable as they make women. It’s my life goal!

“And you people expect to be taken seriously, delusional POS. And then you call feminists misandrists and man-haters, as if women have no reason to hate men.”

I’m an anti-pornography, political moderate, involved in the education of young women. Thanks for calling me a piece of shit who works tirelessly to increase the global misery of the opposite sex, of whom my pregnant wife is a member.

Delusional? The feminist narrative of millenia-long patriarchal oppression is objectionable. When objections are raised, even a silly one like mine – ‘Rubbish’ – the response is too often aggressive abuse. Why do you fear challenge? You reacted according to type.

In my philosophy of life, hate of the kind you endorse – resentment – is never warranted or a good thing. It is a self-consuming, destructive emotion and mentality. The example that comes to mind is Medea, whose husband dishonoured her. She retaliated by slaying their children. ‘Why did you do this?’ he asks. ‘To cause you pain.’ Resentment leads to ruin.

Rather than engaging with my broader argument, you got triggered because I questioned radical feminists’ devotion to their axioms. Time to reflect on your worldview, Monica.

I know this will sting, Monica, but I’m doing more for women than you are.

If we have a daughter, we’ll teach her that she’s precious, and that others are too, so that you need to use reason, not abuse, in discourse.

I was hoping we could initiate a dialogue. It’s a shame you chose a nasty remark, rather than a considerate reply. The offer is still open, though.

Here’s my point once more: radical feminists do themselves a disservice by their violent reaction to criticism. I cited the protest of The Red Pill film in support of this. What’s your opinion on this?

Monica, how can you stand to live with such hatred and bitterness in your heart? Women like you are the reason I stopped calling myself a feminist decades ago. There is nothing noble or admirable about your venomous spite.

“If you have a daughter, she will grow up and she WILL realize her father is a POS. And she will treat you accordingly. It’s only a matter of time. Good luck.”

Or, Monica, she might grow up to be like my daughter, who has a promising career and a satisfying marriage, loves both her parents and her son, and enjoys and appreciates the good men in her life. She is not mired in your miserable swamp of hateful resentment.

Nothing Evander has written indicates that he is a “POS.” You, on the other hand….

And Monica, you sound like a miserably unhappy shrew, who wants other women to be as miserably unhappy and vicious as you are. Fragiile? I’m not the one crying and raging about half the human race, like a 17 year old who is angry about not being asked to prom.

I wonder how old this Monica is. She is like a poster child for why radical feminism is so objectionable to so many. Her immediate sexist put-downs to other women who don’t tow the line (“bitch,” ‘cunt”, “POS”), her boasting of hating half the human race, and indeed bragging that she thrives on hate–all this speaks of a mental illness. I’ve been raped, and half of my ancestors were murdered by Nazis. If I walked around hating all the time I’d have the emotional maturity of a 13 year old. That radical feminism attracts mentally ill people or people who adore totalitarian shame-based collectivism speaks very poorly for the movement.

As others have pointed out, Ms. Murphy has been hoisted by her own petard (groupthink, words as violence, hatred of a group, quasi-religious dogma masquerading as analytical thought, etc). I still support her though. But it would behoove her to recognize that the very m.o. she used has now been used against her (I agree in a more violent way), and she only dislikes it because it is now used against her.

“Declan, don’t worry, sweetheart. I’m not a third wave feminist. I’m a radical feminist, like Meghan. Two very different things. And don’t worry about my happiness. I will do everything that I can to make men as miserable as they make women. It’s my life goal!“

If Monica was truly committed to her life goal, she would simply marry one single man. That poor bastard’s misery would be greater than the sum total of women’s misery over the millennia.

May twitter ban itself into oblivion. The world would be a better place without a platform in which, like cable tv, based on the limitations of the medium itself, those users thrive, who can produce the most attention-grabbing, non-nuanced sound bites and get instantly rewarded.

Mrs. Murphy will probably find the break (be it temporary or permanent) refreshing, or at least that’s what I heard from podcasters who tried it.

Other than that, I can’t resist a bit of schadenfreude, hearing that a movement (or movements, feminism and LG) is facing the very weapons it employed all too readily when it served their needs. This is in an abstract sense though, I do have sympathy with the individuals described there though, if they are targeted without having deployed these weapons themselves on other occasions.

The LGB-whatever movement will crumble under its own weight and from fragmentation pretty soon anyway.

One fervently hopes the current transgender insanity withers away into too well deserved oblivion, but it will leave behind countless innocent adults whose frantically PC parents leapt upon on the bandwagon the first time little Billy said he liked dresses and found some Hippocratically-challenged leech to prescribe puberty-blocking hormones. What will little Billy do when he is a young man who wants an adult penis bigger than the one he had when he was eight?

This is a rerun of the satanic child abuse and recovered memories horrors of recent decades, now recognized as baseless group hysteria that ruined thousands of lives, families, and careers. Those, too, were eagerly promoted by many medical professionals, but sadly none of them spent a day in prison for the lives they destroyed.

I agree that one’s fundamental gender identity is not a malleable “social construct” and that it is anti-scientific to insist that it is. But it’s also not caused by mere fantasy or sociopolitical preferences. The author doesn’t discuss (maybe isn’t aware?) of the scientific evidence that there is neurological wiring in the brain that causes a person to experience themselves as male, female, or neither. In the vast majority of people, this “gender identity” brain circuitry matches up with the person’s other physiological markers of gender, such as hormones and genitals. In a few people there is a wiring mismatch.

At first (and still, in medical and scientific circles), this was described as a neurological disorder, and the suffering it causes the person was described as “gender dysphoria disorder.” I think that this is a reasonable characterization, and that it’s reasonable for people who are in this dysphoric situation to medically change their bodies and hormones and preferred pronouns to match their gender identity wiring to alleviate that suffering.

However, similarly to other neurological differences traditionally describes as disorders, such as autism, some people have felt that calling it a disorder suggests that the person is characterologically “less than” neurotypicals, and so they’ve campaigned to have neurotypicals see the neuro-atypical person’s inner experience of themselves as simply a difference in style and preference that should be accorded equal dignity.

As someone with a much-misunderstood and often derided neurological atypicality myself, Tourette, I have some sympathy with this impulse to normalize misunderstood neurological differences, but I think this should be done by helping the general public understand the science, the neurological underpinnings of the difference.

In contrast, gang-throwing epithets like “transphobia” and “that’s hate speech” at people who are simply saying, in effect, “Wait, what?” is merely engaging in cultural tribal warfare and moral panic. It’s a barrier to mutual understanding and in my opinion immoral.

Maybe historically disempowered and misunderstood groups need their empowerment moment, even though I deplore that some of them—or some of their empathizers—thoughtlessly abuse their power and unfairly inflict harm on people like this author and successfully pressure publishers to capitulate. Maybe, given our common human nature, that trend is the way useful social change sometime has to happen. If so, there will be some deplorable casualties of war on both sides. I wish we could do social change better. How often have we seen that after political revolutionaries overthrow an oppressive government, they then themselves can become just as oppressive and exploitative of their power as the people they overthrew. I guess it’s human nature.

Hopefully eventually the pendulum will swing to balance and people will see that an atypical neurological difference is, in a relevant sense, helpfully characterized as a disorder but that, at the same time, a person with that difference is not thereby a characterologically abnormal person, who is entitled to accurate friendly understanding rather than contempt, and to be judged as an individual, on the content of their character, rather than on the color of their neurological difference.

I agree that what you say is true, but it seems the movement has run amuck. Rates of gender dysphoria seem to be about 1 in 2000. What sane society would create such havoc in order to make that rare person ‘comfortable’ in public life, all the while creating a great deal of anxiety and danger for the rest?
We tried this with ‘comfort’ animals on airplanes and we all know how that went, and this is a great deal more insidious.

Western societies are now the first in the history of our species to operate with a hypertrophic individualist culture. Rather than the historical norm of individual interests being sacrificed to the social collective, or individuals with political rights mostly pursuing their own interests, as has been the case in the modern era, we now have a situation whereby broadly supported standards, the public good and welfare of many, is sacrificed to individuals. It will take a huge and concerted effort to restore the balance.

A strong observation in many ways but not sure it fully applies in this case. In the mentioned history of our species, small percentages of populations (aristocrats, priests, generals etc) have almost always bent society to their will; that is the collective majority was subservient to and often physically sacrificed for a small minority as the centenary of WWI currently reminds us.

With rule by allied small groups the historical norm, today we see a movement back to that baseline – it’s just a question of which groups will exercise that power. The theocrats have a new party in the form of RadSJWs and the trans-activists hijacking their success in those corners of our society where they’s gained sway: universities, traditional journalism and Silicon Valley’s latest monopoly, the social media monopolies of Twitter, Google and Facebook.

BTW, why aren’t they considered “public accommodations” like restaurants and bakers who are prohibited from denying service on arbitrary grounds such as race, sex, religion, political opinion etc?

Andrew
I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. I think that it’s a blend of tribalism, masked as individualism. People are more interested in belonging to a group as a mark of difference from the bourgeoisie.
They want to be different, but in a defined way.
This is not individualism in any meaningful sense.

…@Grant and @ Andrew L …In other words, in virtually every realm of public policy, we must now care more about that tree there, at this moment , in absolute priority to the consequences or lack thereof, for the forest it is part of, either now, or into the future.

In a very real and practical sense, we are in the grip of a tyranny of compassion. We will not escape this easily or painlessly.

@Grant
Agree – we are re-ordering our social norms around the most exotic, most dysfunctional claims of the screechiest minority. That’s how the Progressive Stack works – weaponised, operatic victimhood gets you to the top. That’s the new standard.
To answer your question: no sane society.

“The author doesn’t discuss (maybe isn’t aware?) of the scientific evidence that there is neurological wiring in the brain that causes a person to experience themselves as male, female, or neither. In the vast majority of people, this “gender identity” brain circuitry matches up with the person’s other physiological markers of gender, such as hormones and genitals. In a few people there is a wiring mismatch.”

That’s a very seductive route to take but that claim has already been debunked. If it was that simple we would simply brain scan cis and trans people to learn if they are really cis or trans. Cis people who aren’t really cis would be made to transition and trans people who turn out to be cis would be made to detransition. Can you see where this is going? The social consequences of this “let’s put everyone through the brain scan to learn who’s trans/cis” would be devastating.

“At first (and still, in medical and scientific circles), this was described as a neurological disorder, and the suffering it causes the person was described as “gender dysphoria disorder.” I think that this is a reasonable characterization.”

The UN begs to differ. Sorry not sorry, can’t have your cake and eat it. Either it’s a disorder for which transitioning is the very peculiar, very unusual form of treatment or it’s a lifestyle choice and there is no scientific basis to it at all. Can’t have it both ways.

“However, similarly to other neurological differences traditionally describes as disorders, such as autism, some people have felt that calling it a disorder suggests that the person is characterologically “less than” neurotypicals, and so they’ve campaigned to have neurotypicals see the neuro-atypical person’s inner experience of themselves as simply a difference in style and preference that should be accorded equal dignity.”

This only happened because Ronald Reagan shut down the madhouses and they needed to invent an excuse to allow the crazies to roam freely in society forcing themselves onto sane people. People never discuss the institutional changes behind what seems like grassroots disability activism. It’s always driven by other profiteering interests, whether it’s cost cutting by the government or a corporation with a drug/treatment to push. The trans movement is just a symptom of this, that’s why it’s so silly and myopic to single out trans people.

“Hopefully eventually the pendulum will swing to balance and people will see that an atypical neurological difference is, in a relevant sense, helpfully characterized as a disorder but that, at the same time, a person with that difference is not thereby a characterologically abnormal person, who is entitled to accurate friendly understanding rather than contempt, and to be judged as an individual, on the content of their character, rather than on the color of their neurological difference.”

No, the government does not have a right to dump crazy people onto society as a cost-cutting measure because they shut down the madhouses to build more bombs. Neither does the for-profit medical establishment have a right to demand that we tolerate insanity because they hope to make a profit from us doing so. There are money-driven reasons behind these seemingly humanitarian motivations (“let’s be more tolerant towards the mentally disabled, let’s integrate them better!”) that are never brought up or talked about. The trans movement is just a symptom of all this other stuff that has been going on, and no one ever makes an effort to unpack the trans movement in a larger context. I for one will not put up with this guilt-tripping from vested interests that are tugging at my heartstrings because they hope to make a profit from me going along with the lie that this is supposedly about “integration” and “tolerance”, when it’s really about hiding their cost-cutting measures and profiteering models behind the veneer of disability rights. Dumping a group of extremely mentally ill people onto a society that is ill-equipped at best, unwilling at worst, to deal with them is not humanitarian.

The movement for deinstitutionalization began in the Kennedy Administration, it continued through the 1970s in a series of piecemeal district and circuit court decisions and culminated in the Supreme Court case of Addington v. Texas (1979).

Reagan was elected in 1980 and I don’t recall that he ever had much to say about the issue.

You are right, EK – Reagan had little to do with the unleashing of the mentally ill on society. However, in this incredible era, if a critic of this also happens to be an anti-capitalist leftist (even if “normal” as far sexual identity disfunction goes) – and particularly if you are in the aging boomer generation – you probably harken back earlier eras and insist that it was Ronald Reagan who ruined EVERYTHING.

Ronald Reagan did not close the mental institutions. The ACLU did, with lawsuits. They claimed locking people up who had committed no crime was oppression, and that social justice would be to release them as long as they could lift spoon to mouth. Reagan merely liquidated the now-vacant facilities.

Let’s put the blame where the blame belongs: the ACLU. Let’s send this “Reagan did it” myth to the grave right alongside “Obama is a Muslim”. The ACLU also sued to defend the rights of literal Nazis to march through a Jewish neighborhood. Let’s not pretend like they’re the good guys.

“The author doesn’t discuss (maybe isn’t aware?) of the scientific evidence that there is neurological wiring in the brain that causes a person to experience themselves as male, female, or neither. In the vast majority of people, this “gender identity” brain circuitry matches up with the person’s other physiological markers of gender, such as hormones and genitals. In a few people there is a wiring mismatch.”

Do you have a citation for this? None of the neurological studies I’ve seen support this concept. The brain wiring appears to vary dramatically among individuals and there is considerable overlap between the sexes.

“At first (and still, in medical and scientific circles), this was described as a neurological disorder, and the suffering it causes the person was described as “gender dysphoria disorder.” I think that this is a reasonable characterization, and that it’s reasonable for people who are in this dysphoric situation to medically change their bodies and hormones and preferred pronouns to match their gender identity wiring to alleviate that suffering.”

If that is what is required to alleviate a person’s suffering from true gender dysphoria, then it might be the best path. Sort of like playing along with an elderly relative’s dementia-induced delusion because you know that trying to correct it will only cause them more distress. However, endorsement by society at large of the unscientific concept that these people actually are the opposite gender in some sort of real objective sense seems very dangerous to me, similar to something like endorsement of creationism. It represents a societal movement away from rationality and empiricism.

If your question is prompted by curiosity, Wikipedia is your friend. “Gender dysphoria.” Start there :-). Of course the science is much more complicated than what is appropriate to a comment thread, and there’s a lot we still don’t understand.

The author however was staying at the level of discussing souls and cultural trends, and I wanted to add/bring in that there’s a neurological perspective, because I think it can help people on all sides choose to collaborate and be gentler with each other’s differences and I happen to prefer that.

At the same time, if your question is prompted by feeling sorta irritated or dismissive toward people who are being clueless, aggressive, and hurtful with their gang-shaming and speech suppressing I can relate to that—I go there too, quite often. I probably wouldn’t be reading Quilette if I didn’t.

Thanks for your response. The question was prompted by curiosity and skepticism as I’ve read quite a few journal articles on the neurology of sex differences and transgenderism and none of them seemed to me to support the conclusion that you stated. The high degree of overlap between the sexes on all measures of brain structure argues against the idea that certain brain circuitry causes people to experience themselves as male or female. However, I was open to learning something new if there was additional research out there that I wasn’t aware of.

@Asenath Waite
Thanks for your reply. I wasn’t aware of the studies that have tried and failed to find the neural correlates of the subjective experience of gender identity, but I’m not surprised. Efforts to find the neural correlates of many subjective experiences shared by the vast majority of human beings have also been fruitless so far. This includes the phenomenon of consciousness itself, the experience of déjà vu, the sense of “certainty,” and the experience of conscious will.

As you know, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and brain scans are not the only kind of evidence that counts when seeking the most plausible explanations for a brain phenomenon.

All conscious experience, including the experience of gender identity, happens in the brain. The brain is a physical algorithmic processing entity composed entirely of a neurological system. Gender identity is therefore instantiated in some way in the brain.

I’m open to the possibility that, in the current climate, some people’s subjective experience of their gender identity may be altered by cultural influences. However,gender dysphoria existed long before it became culturally normalized and integrated into grievance politics. And the impetus for my comment was simply that the author omitted to mention anything about how the brain works, focusing only on “souls” and culture.

The most plausible current explanation for gender dysphoria, given the clinical evidence, is a mismatch between brain wiring that influences gender identity and brain wiring that produces hormones and body parts. My use of the term “brain wiring” doesn’t imply something that’s necessarily fixed and determined by the genetics of the conceptus. We don’t know its cause. Brain wiring is altered by fetal development, childhood development, environmental influences, and random chance. Rather, the term “brain wiring” is meant to emphasize that these kinds of experiences are not just ideas people get into their heads. They are physically instantiated sensory abnormalities.

There are disorders in which people feel like an arm or a leg is not properly part of themselves, and they are desperate to have it amputated, and the dysphoria involved is excruciating. This is not properly categorized as a cognitive delusion, or as evidence of psychosis, but rather as a specific central nervous system sensory cortex disorder. See the work of VS Ramachandran.

Another relevant example is the disorder in which people itch furiously and idiopathically, and it’s clearly a sensory brain disorder. See Atul Gawande’s article in the New Yorker several years ago.

The suffering generated by these sensory cortex disorders is real, is as excruciating as physical pain, and can’t be altered by talk therapy or persuasion.

Similarly, mismatched gender identity is unlikely to be a “delusion” in the sense of a misguided culturally instantiated belief or disordered thought process. Rather it’s a vastly more likely to be a disorder of the brain’s internal sensory system.

A rough analogy would be to colorblindness. The failure of a colorblind person to see the difference between red and green is not properly called a “delusion”. It’s properly called a disorder, based on a sensory abnormality.

We don’t need to find the neural correlates of the experience of red and green in the higher visual cortex in order to know that this is a neurological issue. Of course science understands how the subjective experience of vision emerges much better than it understands this with respect to other internal sensory experiences. And in general science is much better at understanding how the brain processes external sensory information than how it processes interoceptive information about internal body states, and, a fortiori, about brain states. We are a long way from understanding the brain. So we have to look at all the evidence we do have and go with the most plausible explanation.

Transgender issues are complicated by the fact that they are more closely tied up with personal identity and with how other people see us than many other sensory processing issues are. Since I have Tourette, a sensory processing disorder commonly misunderstood to be a motor disorder, which causes people to project onto me that I am anxious or restless when I’m not, and therefore to misread who I am to some extent, I am a little bit sensitive to how it must feel to be transgender, even though I don’t yet really feel personally comfortable around transgenderness I don’t know enough transgender people personally for that, perhaps, My mild discomfort doesn’t imply any moral judgment one way or the other, of course, just my own limitations.

My plea is simply that we discuss the phenomenon of gender dysphoria from a scientific perspective, and not solely a cultural, genderpolitical, or pop-psychoanalytic perspective.

I agree that gender dysphoria has a neural basis, but that isn’t the same as saying that it’s due to the person having the brain wiring of the opposite sex. Not any more than a person who feels a need to amputate their arm having the brain wiring of someone without an arm. It is some other sort of neurological issue. My point was that the data show that men and women do not actually have different brain wiring when considering individuals. The differences are only in average trends for populations. This suggests that there is actually no such thing as an innate experience of gender identity. If we were just disembodied, sentient brains we wouldn’t have genders.

@Asenath Waite: Thank you for clarifying our misunderstanding. I was not claiming that people with gender dysphoria have “the brain wiring of the opposite sex”. On the contrary, I agree with you that the research shows no evidence that there are “typically male” versus “typically female” brains—apart from the circuits that produce and regulate sexual and reproductive hormones and organs—and only slight differences in the distribution curves (averages or variances) of male and female populations’ non-reproduction-related traits and behavioral tendencies, on a few specific traits such as verbal ability or spatial rotation ability, with considerable overlap among individuals.

Rather I was pointing to the fact that the brain circuitry that produces the subjective experience of gender identity can be disordered without other aspects of the brain, including the circuitry that produces and regulates sexual hormones and organs, being disordered. The brain is made up of jillions of individual circuits, “psychological mechanisms,” algorithms, built over evolutionary time by the forces of natural selection to serve specific, discrete adaptive functions. They work together, but can be damaged, or abnormally develop, independently, even though other related circuits remain intact or develop normally. We know this because it is true of many neurological conditions. See, for example, the neurologist Oliver Sacks’s book, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. For example, people can have a congenital disorder in their fusiform gyrus that causes them to be unable to recognize people’s faces, even though they can recognize other objects perfectly well, because that brain area is specialized for recognizing faces.

I hope this explanation clears up our misunderstanding and resolves the conflict you thought there was between my take on the situation and the research you’re familiar with.

@the Reverend Wazoo! – In the mentioned history of our species, small percentages of populations (aristocrats, priests, generals etc) have almost always bent society to their will; that is the collective majority was subservient to and often physically sacrificed for a small minority as the centenary of WWI currently reminds us.

Defining far-right as Fascist, rather than Libertarian, defines Libertarianism out of existence. You’re doing something similar here. To define illiberal societies as merely the anarchic dominance of a few powerful individuals over the majority, defines Collectivism out of existence.

BTW, why aren’t they considered “public accommodations” like restaurants and bakers who are prohibited from denying service on arbitrary grounds such as race, sex, religion, political opinion etc?

Because people who use social media are pseudo-customers. The real customers are the advertisers. It would be more accurate to regard social media users as free-loaders, than customers. Civil rights don’t apply.

@Peter from Oz
Peter, we are referring to different things. You’re referring to the culture within groups, whereas I’m referring to the global culture, and its more implicit assumptions.

The culture within these groups is obviously very conformist, and therefore not individualist. However, society-wide, there is no longer any sense that individuals are part of something bigger than themselves, that they should work or dedicate themselves to anything other than themselves, or even that society should not necessarily modify itself to enhance the comfort of those individuals that demand change for their own benefit, or those they claim to represent. Society is now seen just as a resource to the extent that it can aid the individual, and as a system of oppression to the extent that it supposedly inhibits or frustrates the individual.

A society that only accommodates itself to the individual, and places no expectations of loyalty or respect, let alone self-sacrifice, on its members, is a society in which the individual will come to see him or herself as something approaching a god. That is what I mean by hypertrophic individualism. Just like an enlarged organ that consumes excess tissue, the individuals of Western societies are now consuming what has been built up over many centuries.

@Bernard Hill
Agreed

@frances
The Progressive Stack only exploits existing weaknesses, it does not create them.

I see where you are coming from, but I think that progressives are all about colectivisation, not the individual. That is why leftists mostly judge people by their characteristics rather than their character. Yes, the collectives may be split, but I suugest that the State is the religion that they all follow. The State will bring the ”equlaity” they all seek: the sacifice of their individual identities to dictats of the ”consensus”

Peter,
that’s true enough, but its just as true that Progressivism is not the sum total of Western culture. Going off on a bit of a tangent, I think there are four main components of political culture to consider:

1. the left
2. the right
3. government
4. the interactions between 1, 2 and 3

Governments are now so large and broad in scope that they have a culture all of their own. One of the key elements of government culture is the homogenization of society as a means to simplifying its management. Governments want to make things easier on themselves by having:

• one race
• one gender
• one religion
• one law to cover multiple situations (ex: gay marriage)
• a citizenry that supports the governments political ideal of homogeneity

The symbiosis of government culture with private culture (left & right), is what creates the dominant political ideologies. For example, the combination of government culture and left wing values results in Social Justice ideology.

Government culture has long been recognized – think the military-industrial complex – but for some reason it remains mostly the elephant in the room.

As we move down the path to CrazyTown, this Twitter stuff is going to seem mild. And nothing is going to stop it. Maybe we can slow it down, but I seriously doubt we can get off of this path. We’re dealing with religion here – the church of equality. You thought you were a stone but in reality you are a brick. Think everybody is not a brick? Well, your account gets shut down, or you get fired, or worse – the Gulag system. At some point I can really see the establishment of re-education camps – the Gulag system.

So far I’ve always thought, Jordan Peterson was a bit over the top with his neo-marxism-phobia.

But seeing the ingredients, I’m not so sure anymore: Weaponized words, semi religious zeal, stupid people drunk on power, silent majority and a path how people with these ideas would seep into positions of power (see Canada’s prime minister).

That’s because of the basic-as principle that ideas have consequences. Peterson and other perceptive thinkers identify an emergent idea, analyse its logic, and then predict its likely social impact. As numerous posters have pointed out, some radical feminists used language, not as a tool for reason, but as a blunt instrument to crush opponents, labelling them misogynists. If you legitimise that as a discursive mode, it’s no surprise at all that the trans-activists are using the same trick, to the astonishment only of ideologues intoxicated with their success by means of it whose group are now copping it.

Yes Evander! Perfect example from this article: “After the man’s arrival, she stayed in the room two nights, but felt so unsafe (I use the term here in its literal sense).” She uses the term [unsafe] in the literal (!) sense? The radical left has so devalued language that when the time comes that they actually need the words, they no longer serve their purpose.

@Markus
Join the dots: Gramsci, Marcuse, Rudy Dutscke (‘the Long March through the institutions’), Frankfurt School in US colleges – and leave their influence promoted and unchallenged in the Western Academy for 50 years. Three generations in, is it surprising that the poltical class, the courts, the public services, the educational institutions, and now alarmingly medicine are captured? That explains the Trudeaus of the West – inevitable product of the process. Game, set, match!

@ Markus: “So far I’ve always thought, Jordan Peterson was a bit over the top with his neo-marxism-phobia.”

He very well may be. Peterson cannot predict the future any better than you or I.

But I think of him akin to someone who says, “I think I smell gas”. That person may be imagining things and there is no gas leak. But you damn well better check it out, because the asymmetry of caution versus consequences is staggering.

Due to an editing error, the last sentence of my previous comment omitted a clause, making it potentially confusing. It should read:
“Hopefully eventually the pendulum will swing to balance and people will see that an atypical neurological difference is, in a relevant sense, helpfully characterized as a disorder, but that, at the same time, a person with that difference is not thereby a characterologically abnormal person, but rather someone to be treated with accurate friendly understanding rather than contempt, and to be judged as an individual, on the content of their character, rather than on the color of their neurological difference.”

i agree with your sentiment and the argument behind it but must point out an internal contradiction needing resolution: it’s not possible to be both different from the norm and the same as the norm at the same time time, ie, “helpfully characterized as [having] a disorder” whilst simultaneously “not thereby a characterologically abnormal person”

Certainly, such people, like everyone, should “be treated with accurate friendly understanding rather than contempt” but this is *not* based on assessing their ‘normality’ or other measure of group identity but rather when they are “… judged as an individual, on the content of their character rather than on…”well anything else, really. The current passion for judging everyone by the majority/minority status of some group they can be assigned to is a dead-end. After only a few intersections we find ourselves in a very small group indeed – hence the judging of the individual to cut through such questions as “how many tall/short, left-/right-handed, fe/male, black/white/brown/yellow, hetero/homo/etc, dis/abled, rich/poor, etc etc people are there in my particular town?

Perhpas this is more natural for me because i live in a country without any majority; merely a plurality; no one language is spoken by “most people” at home so the idea of “most people are X” has less traction than in the states both as a conformist force and as something to rail against. who cares? Who are you, the person in front of me now?

@the reverend wazoo!. Yes, I think your comment may have been prompted by my not being clear what I meant by “characterologically normal.“ It’s my opinion that, when people have a neurological disorder (or, to put it more neutrally, a neuroatypicality that’s relatively uncommon in their social environment) which causes a mismatch between how they see themselves as a whole person, and how most other people see them, the person with the disorder has a responsibility to try to explain the basis for their difference, neutrally and patiently, without scapegoating other people for not having understood. I recognize this is not easy to do because being misunderstood your whole life is painful and frustrating.

And it’s also my opinion that people in the majority, without the disorder, have a responsibility to try to understand the other person‘s perspective, and not dismiss them as globally “less than” or “weird” or “nuts” or “deluded.” This is also very hard to do. It’s human nature to “essentialize“ people’s character based on their external behavior, and its conformance to prevailing norms, and when that behavior is prompted by something atypical that people don’t understand and that makes them feel uncomfortable themselves, it’s human nature to attribute it to a personality deficiency or cluelessness or bad faith and to treat it with contempt.

In my opinion these difficulties on both sides, should optimally be overcome through education and compassion, to reduce unmerited suffering and exhausting and painful conflict. I think this problem applies, arguably, to many neurological differences, including autism, chronic pain, and Tourette, arguably also to disorders of the emotions system such as atypical depression and anxiety, and arguably also to the externally different characteristics of minorities in any society that cause some people in the majority to experience them as an outgroup.

It’s the default setting of human nature to treat people who one sees as “outgroup” with indifference or contempt, while treating people experienced as “ingroup” to be treated with compassion and respect.

Hopefully we are all trying to “upgrade” our default human nature settings, and expanding our concept of who’s in our ingroup. Grievance politics and identity politics work against that and I find them destructive and deplorable, at least in the short term.

However, and the long-term, for all I know, they may be a necessary part of the dynamics of human social change—that historically marginalized and misunderstood people use to clarify their experience and gain more power. We don’t really understand large-group social dynamics well enough to analyze this thoroughly. But hopefully this is a phase of group development that will eventually produce a pendulum reaction leading to an integration later on at some point which will result in greater mutual understanding and reduced suffering on both sides. Thesis, antithesis, then, hopefully, synthesis.

The trans phenomenon is endlessly amusing. On one hand, trans presupposes rigid and engendered social norms for both men and women, with women acting “one way” and men acting “another way”, and one being trans when they identify with the engendered norms of another gender but having a particular biological sex. But then we are told there is no such thing as biological sex (in the same way feminists have told us there are no engendered norms).

But if there is no biological sex, and no engendered norms for how men and women should behave, there can be no trans, as there could be no conflict between your biological set up and your aspirational gender. Nor would operations such as a sex change or hormonal treatments be possible (how can you take “male” or “female” hormones in your “transition” if there wasn’t a “male” or “female” sex?)

On the other hand, it is sold as “progressive” because supposedly the fact that people can act and, through medical interventions, resemble persons of another sex, it “proves” biological sex doesn’t exist. I suppose next we will discover that because you can hypnotize people to act like chickens, the regressive idea of biological species does not exist.

But the whole thing deeply undermines the feminist narrative, which was all about attacking engendered norms. Feminists oscillated between claiming that such norms did not exist and sometimes shifted to claiming such norms should not exist. Trans, by problematizing biological sex, ends up reifying “normative gender roles”.

Granted, both are premised on trying to shame and pressure men that want act in accordance with traditional male roles and women that want to act in accordance with traditional female roles. Both presuppose traditional biological concepts of sex and traditional concepts of normative gender roles. Both are committed to Orwellian campaigns of denying those traditional concepts that they conceptually presuppose to promote political objectives, but at the base, traditional feminism is about denying traditional normative gender roles, and the transmovement is about denying traditional biological concepts of sex, and therefore, while they are progressive relatives, they are deeply, conceptually, incompatible. Trans requires highly rigid gender norms in order to be a “thing”, whereas traditional feminism requires highly rigid notions of biological sex (the “us and them” of the “sisterhood”) to be a “thing”.

All beliefs are based on some assumptions and we can disagree about what those are, but as you say the issue with trans is the internal inconsistency. Like some religious followers, they demand you accept all the dogma; just don’t think about it too hard.

I’m pretty sure we will see species identity become a visible notion soon enough, probably in regards to primates first. I have a few percent Neanderthanl blood, so surely I have a legit claim to be mis-specied as human.

I want to be the world’s first trans-species. I honestly hate being a biological ape. Disgusting creatures. I’m a dolphin inside, and the world better recognize that or you’ll be denying my right to exist. My feelings will be hurt, and I might just hurt myself. My new name will be ‘Flipper’ and I’ll be demanding surgery at public expense soon enough.

Personally, I’m fine with being human and female, but hate being merely middle class. I identify with billionaires. I need a private jet, a Manhattan penthouse and a villa in St. Bart’s to fully express my inner rich person. I actually have to cook my own meals, which makes me feel very oppressed.

Feminism presuppose men and women are biologically different, but should be treated and allowed to act however they want in the social space, regardless of traditional gender roles. That is to say, it rejects norms applied at the level of the group on the basis of biological sex. A woman who becomes a computer programmer is NOT “acting like a man”, woman who chooses not have children is NOT going against her fundamental biological purpose as an organism, etc.

Trans presupposes that in the social space, men and women are at the normative level fundamentally different engendered entities, but I should be allowed to chose my role (male or female) in the social space, regardless of traditional, biological, concepts of sex. In the trans world, while I am free to “act like a man” or “act like a woman”, the social world consists only of reified normative gendered roles. Women at the level of the group are subject to social norms, and men at the level of the group are subject to social norms, only “I” can swim between the groups, unlimited by my biological sex. Without that reified engendered social space, there can be no “trans”, you are just a man who likes to wear dresses, or a woman who wants to grow a beard.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is very “progressive” by today’s standards as Khomeini was okay with transgendered people provided they got the surgery. This gave Iranian society an out for homosexuals (who otherwise face execution) and well as deterrence for homosexuals (if you get caught, it was the axe to the neck or the axe to the genitals). It also left traditional Islamic gender roles in place, if anything, it reinforces them. It shows the kind of political pragmatism that Theocracy is often accused of lacking.

It’s almost a Heisenberg view of ‘norms’, they not only exist but are set in neutronium for all time when a particular grievance group has a need for them (for their benefit, of course), and only until they are no longer needed. Then it’s back to calling the norm an ‘ism’ or ‘try’ or ‘phobia’. Situational ethics at its finest.

Sorry, but we only know one side of the story. I see non-controversial statements that are deemed controversial all the time on Twitter and no one is getting kicked out. I really wish there was balance in this story but I don’t see it. This stuff is not happening in the real world to the extent Megan states. Instances do not equal Patterns. I’m not accusing her of lying, I’m stating that she only sees ‘this’ and makes it out to be more than it is. Megan has a history with Twitter that we do not know. If Twitter is in the wrong we’ll soon find out. Is Megan open to allowing Twitter to fully publish their interactions with her since her first warning? I think it would help me come closer to having objective insight into this. Lastly, her publisher may have also dropped her because their only marketing tool to get her books sold was wiped out. Can we see the letter of rejection by the publisher please. Again, I only want to know more and not accusing anyone of anything improper. I wish you well Megan. Really I do. But something doesn’t fit.

I vehemently disagree with radfems about most things, and have yet to meet a lesbian able to go an hour without saying something hostile or contemptuous about men. There is definite schadenfreude in seeing Dr. Frankenstein savaged by her own monster. Still, despite everything we see differently, I do think we live in the same world. When it comes to trans activists, either they’re insane, or I am. I won’t spit an ally of convenience in the face just because she might not turn into a long-term friend. It’d be nice to have such luxuries, but the situation is pretty serious.

It’s interesting to see how viciously the mob has turned on these people. Not surprising, though. I’ve long believed that the progressive mutaween don’t particularly care about women or LGBT as such, but rather about being on the cutting edge of social justice, members of the ethical elite. These days, whatever remains of patriarchy gasps for air in the intensive care, while Burger King has a Gay Pride Whopper. The rights of women and homosexuals have been mainstreamed to the degree that no one gains any virtue points by championing them. Transwomen and genderqueers are however a different case, so after having served their purpose, lesbians and “TERFs” get thrown under the bus. It’s easy to do it to them, because they have no real allies beyond the progressive movement. Even on individual level it’s probably worse, because compared to average white straight guys, a much higher percentage of their friends and contacts are from those circles, and thus inclined to denounce them to save their own skins.

I’ve long believed that the progressive mutaween don’t particularly care about women or LGBT as such, but rather about being on the cutting edge of social justice, members of the ethical elite.

Agreed and well put, but then what defines the edge? Perhaps the activism drives social change, which drives perceptual change, which drives activism. This positive feedback loop pushes society well beyond where even the activists of a few years ago wanted to take us. How can we stop this process?

In the past, the authorities stepped in and by any means necessary shut them down.

Now the authorities are either sympathetic to or actively support this anti-social lunacy, most of the people are quite confused about what the issues are and what is the exact nature of this horrible oppression the activists say they are living under and there are no longer any sufficiently autonomous intermediate political entities capable of dealing with something that looks like a mass hysteria that is also protected by a mountain of federal law and Supreme Court decisions.

I’m a pessimist about all this. China may find the pickings very easy in a few years.

Cultures that meet the challenge survive and cultures that can’t meet the challenge are extinguished.

If you followed the US/EU press after 2014 you may have noticed that Hungary and Poland rose to the challenge posed by the EU, they were and continue to be called fascists and so far they have survived.

It does seem like we are at one of those major inflection points in history and certainly the West that emerged victorious in 1945 is about to collapse.

I foresee the day when certain people will want to transition from singular to plural. It will then become an offence against their human rights to pay them only one wage, rather than two or three. They will say things like “I was never comfortable with the number I was assigned at birth. I always knew I was two people trapped in a one person’s body. The moment of truth came when I discovered I agreed with me.”

Meghan, congratulations on a very well written article, and kudos to you for supporting the people in your article who’ve been badly treated by the cultists.

Last week was not the first time Twitter punished me for criticizing body/mind trans mysticism.

While some of the criticism in the comments here has merit, getting beyond that I think it is important we focus on the underlying assumptions and philosophical positions of the trans-activists. Know your enemies and know yourself …

Perhaps what is going on is a symptom of a more fundamental shift in many peoples understanding and comprehension of the world. Is there a general trend towards mysticism? What could be driving that? Perhaps the same forces or trends behind the interest in the occult in some Feminist circles?

Yet another “Then they came for me” testimonial issues forth from the Identity Politics rabbit hole. How not at all surprising, how almost mildly entertaining. Unless theses people are willing to consider dragging themselves up out of that reeking chasm these emissions are pretty meaningless. Feminism in its current form is not a force for good. Own that.

In my humble opinion, the frightening aspect of Ms Murphys article/experience is Twitter suspension with conditions on how to return to Twitter. The platforms for discussion/information judging speech is more pernicious than Trans debate, LGBTQ or feminist ideals.

I confess it gives it gives me a giddy feeling to read about “woke” folks being messed up by their own logic…as in Lesbian women being called transphobes when they discriminate against “women” with penises. We’re in strange times…and you gotta appreciate the humour that’s being produced by these situations.

Welcome Meghan to the outcasts, misfits, the disagreeable. Having never really been accepted or part of mainstream society, I’m finding it getting rather crowded. As has happened many times in history, when society goes batshit crazy the outcasts become the core upon which something gets built.

It’s going to get much worse before it gets better. Get good at a skill that is indispensable, no one starves if your book isn’t published but people would starve if the misfits and rejected i know stay at home.

When someone dares to say that a person with a penis is not a woman, and are rejected by the purported foundations of society, that society has lost its mind. I’ve often wondered how Romans could watch people be murdered as entertainment. I think we are seeing how. The society lost its mind.

I wish you well. You will find that words and purported beliefs are meaningless; support and encouragement will come from people you disagree with.

Rigid ideologies have always devolved into fratracide, if you would tolerate the term. You may realize how lucky you are to have been kicked out before it got real bloody.

Derek: A woman with a penis is not a woman in the same way that i, a white person, cannot claim to be an african-american person even if i feel like an african american. Not long ago we saw what happens when a white woman does that: African Americans werent sympathetic – to say the least. I agree that rigid ideologies are problematic. Which is why i, like many people, am accommodating and compassionate and respect people’s chosen (rather than biological) identities. But people with penises showering with biological women who are afraid and uncomfortable. Umm. No. Personally it wouldnt bother me. I am pretty easy going about nakedness. But my 14 year old daughter and 87 year old mother wouldnt have it. Their feelings count too.

Hah – and you thought you could escape bigoted attitudes. No chance… the SJW men will get surgery, pretend to be a woman, and then get offended when you don’t buy the sleight of hand.

I am curious as to how this cult blossomed. SRS has been around for a long time, dating back to the 1960’s. Yet, all of the sudden, it’s a Big Thing. Maybe now that the minorities are waking up to the fact that they’ve been patronized all these years with no tangible results for them, the progressive crowd has to find another ‘oppressed victim’ group to emote over.

I know someone who went M to F over a decade ago. I knew this person for a long time, and when he (can’t think of him any other way) went that direction, all I could think is – I’ve always known him to have good judgment, so if he felt it necessary to take that radical step, there must be something to it.

No, he’s not a woman now, just a facsimile.

The irony is – this person, like most of the very rare genuine cases, just want to be left alone and assume the new identity with no fanfare. Yet, here’s the cult, running along behind them, saying: “Look, everyone! I’m understanding this trans person! That one, right there, in the skirt and heels! I’m so cool!”

I don’t know what is more baffling – how someone can become so absorbed in their personal facade, or how they can’t see how utterly phony they are being.

Let’s face it… the SJW crowd has abandoned any pretense of rational thought, and now seems to drift from one ‘crisis’ to another. And if they can’t find a crisis, they’ll manufacture one.

You’re right, most of the older transsexuals (the approx 5000 in the UK who have a Gender Recognition Certificate) want to be left alone. Many of them will state that they know they are male. And in a perfect example of “you couldn’t make it up” an “old school’ transsexual was recently locked out of twitter for misgendering herself!

In which a radem learns what reactionaries have known for a thousand years: progressivism doesnt have an off switch. The world can never be equal or inclusive enough. We must always revise our perspectives to make sure every single subset of people, not matter how small, is celebrated as though they are the new class of nobels. In fact, they are the new class of nobels, and criticizing nobles is never going to work out for you.

Its the authors proclamation that she is not “hatefull” that is the most baffling. Maybe she really isnt hatefull, but those with more power than she has deemed that she is. In the end thats all that matters.

Of course that is a whole different world of progressive bullshit. Everyone hates something. This morning I saw a facebook post that said something like “NAZIs are people, but they should still be shot.” And there is of course good old Sarah Jeong who hates white people (as a group anyway, she seems to like them individually as sexual partners). How is her Twitter doing these days?

The point here is that Twitter couldnt give a shit less about hate, as long as the hate is not directed towards the progressive Aristocracy. Our fight is a fight to normalize hate, because hate is normal. Even if Twitter doesnt think it is normal.

This is exactly what Jordan Peterson has been saying: “Sometimes the Left goes too far, and we need to define where that is.”

But you have just encapsulated his idea in a terse, universal, not-condemnatory metaphor that speaks to anybody, regardless of social status, intelligence, age, etc.

Peterson needs to hear this and use it. Really.

What you just wrote is the kind of perfect messaging that advertising people like me struggle for months to produce. This needs to be left in comments on his videos, on his Twitter feed … he needs to hear this piece of messaging poetry. You, my friend, may have just come up with “Got Milk?”

But you are correct. The problem with Peterson is that he is an intellectual, and that doesnt mean jack shit to the average person. The electrician dad doesnt want his son growing up in a world where people are praised for chopping their dicks off. Very reasonable really. He doesnt need Peterson grabbing metaphors from Greek lit to make that case. Fly over country already knows that history doesnt view cutting your dick off with high regard. One could call it intuative.

“In which a radem learns what reactionaries have known for a thousand years: progressivism doesnt have an off switch.”

Looking back, transexual activism became the big hot button issue about 5 minutes after the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage was announced. Suddenly, Kaitlin Jenner was on the cover of every magazine. It’s hard to remember now that gay marriage was voted down in every state (including California) when it was on the ballot in the oughts. Once the same sex marriage battle was won in the courts, the left immediately moved to push the envelope by introducing the Next Big Thing.

This situation must be doubly frustrating for radical feminists, who are accustomed to receiving rousing support from the far left for hatred of all men across the board, but are now receiving this pushback from their own social circles telling them they are not allowed to hate this subgroup of men who are actively trying to move in on women’s territory. Not only that, the whole transgender concept severely undermines the feminist idea that men and women are mentally similar and that differences in life outcomes are due to social conditioning/oppression. Instead, because of this subgroup of men, the left now embraces the idea that there are fundamental psychological differences between the sexes that are so universal as to actually be defining of one’s gender. Although of course the contradictory conditioning/repression narrative is also endorsed by the same people, depending on context, so that may at least be some comfort to the radical feminists.

Progressive bias at twitter is well known. Complaining about it, which has been going on since twitter’s founding, is pointless. No Washington DC agency, or Judge, is going to wave a magic wand suddenly force twitter to be Conservative-friendly.

This all illustrates the tremendous market opportunity for a new media concern to create a twitter analog that is either neutral and transparent or right-ish.

The author analyzes the trees in intelligent and moving detail, but neglects the forest.
WHY does Twitter, a multinational multibillion dollar private company, side with these quasi-religious fringe lunatics? And I use each word with care btw–these people are fringe. A small percentage of the overall population agrees with their demands. (Many people agree that an individual trans person should be treated as an individual human being, and that this person should also not be subject to discrimination in a job for which they’re qualified, and so on. But that is not what this lunatic fringe wants.

1. So why is the mainstream media, silicon valley, intellectuals, and high level progressives in favor of this violent repressive movement to the point they actually condone violence, censorship, and banishment to the Gulag (good Lord)?
2. Why is this repressive violence only male to female, not female to male? Why are women the targets (as opposed to women who transition to men and demand same from men?)

It’s hugely disturbing how quickly the Far Left has embraced they very crimes they criticize: misogyny, racism (everything is about race for them), homophobia (attacking the lesbians), anti-semitism (I feel safer as a Jew with Republicans than with a group of Far Left folks).

Why is this happening? How do we get to a place where the editor of a mainstream magazine can post that on Twitter –and get rewarded? Where intellectuals argue with straight faces that the Gulag is humane punishment for ‘re-education’? It’s frankly scary to see how quickly the intellectual class embraces brutality and regressiveness and hypocrisy and all our worst qualities.

I have to wonder if this is part of a larger effort to sow dissent and dischord into the West. I do think it fits the purposes of many groups. I’m flabbergasted that otherwise intelligent people though are so easily the useful idiots Stalin spoke of.

“Many people agree that an individual trans person should be treated as an individual human being, and that this person should also not be subject to discrimination in a job for which they’re qualified”

–Serious mental illnesses (such as gender dysphoria) disqualify applicants for nearly all employment. This is NOT a Civil Rights issue.

Almost everyone has some “mental illnesses”. As long as someone can be a productive member of society, it’s better to let them chose how to live. If you don’t like it, stay out of their personal life.

Trying to make trans people outcasts isn’t going to do anything except give SJW more ammunition and it can’t be justified. The ideology only becomes a problem when it starts infringing on the rights of others.

@r henry “For which they are qualified.” You seem to not understand that concept. Im quite certain youve already had a doctor or lawyer or whatever who unbeknownst to you was mentally ill (eg bipolar or serious depression). Being mentally ill is not in itself a disqualification for a job. And i never said it was a civil rights issue. I view it as an individualist issue. People should have equal opportunity (NOT outcome).

As a aged pink diaper baby firmly rooted in old-fashioned leftism, I long ago concluded that modern progressives are blindly naive useful idiots being manipulated by whoever is trying to destroy western civilization. Dunno if that is the Russians, Chinese, Islamists, or Kilngons, but there is more madness afoot in the West than can be accounted for by any hypothesis that does not involve conspiracy theories. How else could so many get so stupid so fast? It all started with Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

DF, My kids loved Barney. We even went to watch him in person. I didn’t see a lot of politics in Barney (and yes I looked hard). By contrast, Thomas the Tank Engine was absurdly reactionary (Marx would have hated it and for good reason). The sight (sound) of Alec Baldwin playing (voicing) Mr. Conductor was hilarious. Just how dumb are these people? Answer, very dumb.

@Dan Flehmen, Yes I’ve had the same thought. They’re obviously being manipulated by some power(s) that want to bring down the West, but who that is is unclear. I’m guessing a confluence of interests.

It’s appalling how easily ‘intellectuals’ are manipulated when you appeal to their ego and sense of worth without evidence. (“I am a Good and Morally and Intellectually Superior person because I press a button once every two years for the Party and occasionally put a sign in my front yard.”)

I guess there is a large group of otherwise intelligent people who find it very seductive to feel righteous and have their lives feel like they have meaning without doing anything whatever to earn the righteousness or live the meaning. I think it must be the fall of God that has created the vacuum.

I can’t believe people are blaming *radfems*, of all people, for transgender activism. Radfems have always opposed it. If you’re so keen on blaming women for male violence that you really can’t go without it, at least blame libfems.

I don’t think anybody is “blaming” radfems for transgender activism. Those who appear to be are probably just guilty of imprecise wording. Most readers here at Quillette would actually agree with Murphy’s stance on the problems with transgender theory.

I think the point here is that non-radicals (most Quillette readers) have long loathed radfems for their guerilla SJW techniques which stifle dialog and paint the entire world and its history in a single misogynistic narrative. The use of Critical Theory to weaponize victimhood and to create an environment where “punching down” can only be seen as phobic behavior are gag tactics long employed by radfems.

We’re not “blaming” them for transgender activism (which is reprehensible), we’re merely pointing out how quick radfems are to scream “Unfair!” and “What about free speech!” when the culture war strategies they helped to perfect are used against them.

Thanks for making these observations civilly; whereas we know that rarely does any one rebuttal convince anyone to change their mind on the spot, regardless how sensible and nuanced it might be, we must remember that a series of the same over time is exactly how people do change their minds, as I well recall doing so.

First we loudly reject ideas we feel to be heresy, then we merely sneer but quietly rehearse those arguments in our heads. Eventually, repeatedly hearing things we can’t refute iwe stop actively arguing against them, leaving our still-enthused fellow-travellers to do so and when listening objectively to that (for a change) begin to think it just doesn’t wash.

So persevere, you folks speaking sensible things, and don’t worry that your “opponent” isn’t converted on the spot; that’s not how it works. You are nonetheless helping to provide the cumulative bits and pieces which eventually produce the desired result.

Radfems are only getting the credit/blame for popularizing the pseudo-intellectual tools now being used by the RadTrans against the RadFems, hence the schadenfreude from those who previously bore the brunt of those weaponized slogans.

Anyway, when did RadFems become middle-of-the-road centrists? You can’t be a RadFem without being Rad and you can’t be Rad without being extreme – that’s what radical means. So when any Radicals being to tell others to stop being Radical it’s amusing from the outside.

Off topic from this comment, but I find it interesting how many men in the comments seem still embittered by the fact that so many radical feminists loudly call attention to male violence, as if rf’s introduced the concept of “silencing” the approved “other,” when it really was men who originally decided who was worthy to speak, or not. It can be argued, actually, that women choosing to silence men in discussion of women’s issues was not just necessary, but reactionary, given men’s prior centuries of treatment.

So it’s always been funny to me that men, aka TransWimmin, act like they’re victims. They fulfill the male incel stereotype so well, bc they can’t stand to be left out of the conversation as men, and they Really can’t stand to be left out of the conversation as “women.” “See? I wear lipstick too! Can I join the circle now?” Pathetic. I echo other women who have commented that the disapproval and wariness of transtrender politics has existed in radical feminist circles for a long time.

To others there might not seem a division in feminism, but there is. It’s been there for a while, this crack in the chassis. You have one subset of feminism determined to derail everything prior feminists worked for—protections for women based on SEX thru the transgender movement, sex-positivity which romanticizes and encourages engaging in porn, prostitution, and having sex without reflection or personalization; there’s also the “liberal feminist’s” habit of defending make up and femininity to the death, acting as though all critique of these systems created to keep women in a constant loop of her own hell, is an insult to women’s autonomy everywhere.

Which, I love seeing people call this out in the comments—feminism IS eating itself. These liberal feminists did not come out of nowhere. They came from radical feminism, evolved like a deformed limb. Now we want to cut the limb off, but it can’t be done. It has a mind of its own. Feminism will have to crash and burn and start over. I want this to happen—I’m not sure there is a way to just sever our ties to this transgender nightmare. We have to wait for everything to go to complete shit—for people to see how fucked up all of this is. Every time I read about another transgender sex offender/pedophile (and there are many) I wonder how much more will people need before they see the mistake that was made in idolizing autogenyphiles & white men who get hard on’s from wearing pads and sticking tampons up their ass.

The shit I have seen on transgender threads you would not believe. They really think they can get a uterus transplant, or a period. These delusions are being fed by an entire nation. No one is surprised they’ve come into this power despite being a significant minority, with more rates of criminal and violent offense than rates of death. Crazy shit, man.

I want to emphasize, as well, that the man-hating lesbian accusation is really getting old. Some of you need to wake up. You really think it’s man-hating that led us here? It’s like the resentment never ends. You all know where the “proof” is of this systemic mistreatment and oppression, btw… Ain’t nobody have to do that work for you. It’s easy to find, if you go looking.

Bottom line, we can all agree this gender bullshit evolved from feminism and the “QIAP+” section of lgbt activism. I disagree the responsibility lies only with those people in “fixing” this issue. It lies with all of us. Men, they’re already coming for you. Pretty soon you won’t be able to say Eva Mendes’ ass is tight without some Man with a six o’clock shadow and poorly applied eyeshadow asking you if you’d “fuck her.” and siccing “her” dogs on you when you don’t.

“but rather to make sense of arguments made by activists within that community”

This “community” suffers almost universally from serious mental and emotional disorders. This is not hateful, nor is it controversial. I don’t hate people who suffer from anorexia nervosa, however I sure as hell am not going to redefine what healthy human nutrition is in order to avoid potentially insulting someone who is, sadly, suffering from such a devastating disconnect with reality.

Another common type of dysmorphia is anorexia nervosa. Victims of this disease genuinely, truly, in their deepest hearts of heart, believe they are fat and need to lose weight. So strong is this delusion, they will starve themselves to death. Anorexia has the highest death rate of any mental disorder 🙁

Anorexics are deserving of compassion and whatever treatment program they wish.

But it is absolute lunacy to insist that Weight Watchers agree, upon pain of legal or social action, that 77 lb, near-death anorexics be included in promotional literature as examples of ‘fat’. It is ludicrous to insist that any references on any media of any kind include anorexics in the category of ‘overweight’ on the grounds that anorexics FEEL overweight. It is not just preposterous that size 000 be called ‘plus size’, it is dangerous.

How is having gender dysphoria (being trans) different than having anorexia.

We feel sad for these people, and have compassion for the powers of their delusions, and wish them recovery and peace, but under no circumstances are we going to objectively agree that an anorexic really, truly IS fat, and should drop a few more pounds.

@andrea. I think anorexia is in some respects a useful analogy. In a previous comment I analogized gender dysmorphia to autism, chronic pain, Tourette, body integrity dysmorphia, and chronic idiopathic itching. At the same time, I think your analogy is incomplete in the context of a discussion about how to handle transgender activism run amok.

Gender dysmorphia, like autism and Tourette, may have a much bigger and more painful impact specifically on social interactions and relationships than anorexia does, because people can more readily separate their assessment of what it means to feel much fatter than one actually is from their assessment of other aspects of the person’s personality. I think having gender dysmorphia, autism, or Tourette more globally affects the kind of person one feels one is, and how other people relate to one as a person. (Maybe it’s because these disorders appear much earlier in childhood, and are even more poorly understood and behaviorally social-norm divergent, and because their external manifestations make other people even more uncomfortable, that the potential for social distress, frustration and politicization is arguably much greater.)

The pronoun problem is a good example of how challenging it is to combine the reality that someone has a misunderstood disorder with the goal of normalizing them and enabling them to be treated with accurate compassionate respect. I’ve participated in workgroups of 10-20 people where everyone introducing themselves was prompted to share not only their name but their preferred pronoun, even though the leader had no advance knowledge that anyone in the group had a gender identity different from their socially conforming gender appearance, and even though the number of people who want a different pronoun is statistically minuscule. So far no one has requested a pronoun other than he or she and no one’s gender identity has been visually ambiguous.

I’ve found this requirement overbearing, and didn’t like being forced to focus on everybody’s gender in a context where it wasn’t relevant to the group’s topic. Ironically, it can have the effect of making people feel more pigeonholed and stuck in their gender role rather than emphasizing our common humanity and similarities.

I recognize that if a person does have a different preferred pronoun, it’s less shaming for them if everyone has to announce their preferred pronoun rather than them having to volunteer it. But lots of differences are like that. For example I have Tourette, and when people don’t know this, it causes them to experience me as a little weird or annoying in groups because I fidget so much. And I also feel a little isolated because I know my behavior is probably being misunderstood. It would be nice for me if everyone understood what Tourette is, and I could volunteer, “by the way I have Tourette” without people misunderstanding what that means, or just thinking it means I’m weird, and thereby making things even worse for me socially.

But no one would ever suggest that all group leaders across our culture should prompt everyone in any group to introduce themselves by sharing whether they identify as neurotypical or neuroatypical, and how they want people to relate to their fidgetiness, or, in the case of autism, lack of eye contact, or whatever other potentially misunderstood behavior is a manifestation of their neurological difference.

There are many other differences people have that result in behaviors that are socially salient, and affect how comfortable how they feel in groups and how people treat them in groups. I once led a group discussion in which one man had slight Parkinson’s and kept nodding his head up and down; it took a long time for it to dawn on me that he wasn’t agreeing with what I was saying, but simply shaking. It would’ve been better if he could’ve said up front, “By the way, I have Parkinson’s, which is causing my head to nod, so when I nod, keep in mind that I’m not necessarily agreeing with you.”

But I am also aware that I was really relieved when, after the 1960s, writers started making an effort not to use the generic “he” when writing about people in general. As a woman, it really did make me feel more dignified and more included. And I have no problem with people using the singular “they” themselves whenever they feel it’s appropriate.

I wish people with the disorder and their advocates would focus on education rather than vilification, and would have more compassion for how hard it is for all of us, whether we’re in the majority or the minority, to understand what it feels like to be someone whose brain is different from one’s own.

Just so we know who we’re dealing with here, Ms Murphy wrote on her website’s comment section 18 days ago, i.e. before her falling out with Twitter : All of your comments have been published,but if comments are removed, that’s up to the discretion of the moderator (me!) and is not up for debate.

Not up for debate. Could it be any more clear?

This was not a one-off isolated event.

You’ve left so many stupid comments on the site that I’ve deleted, so I’m disinclined to publish any of them, as clearly you’re not here in good faith, but just so you know where you are, we do not argue, on this site, that trans-identified males are female.

And she’s determined to keep her site under tight control

No, you tool. As I already explained, all comments are moderated. A person has to manually approve every single one.

That’s some top-tier control freakery right there.

I don’t want to drive traffic to Murphy’s website, but so many of the comments by the radfems are what you’d expect to find in a cesspit.

Matriarchy is the only way to go.I don’t want equality with males.I want to burn their system to the ground and build something new and better.

Let’s hope the new and better unequal world she builds from ash is one without the most devious tools of Patriarchy: jar lids.

The radfems have a major hangup about BDSM. The author herself opines: Homosexuality does not fetishize domination, subordination, and abuse, so no.

Either she’s completely ignorant of the vibrant BDSM culture within the gay community or she’s a liar.

In response to “In a consensual sexual context power is expressed by both dominant and submissive parties…” a commentator writes: That’s what we’re saying is deeply unhealthy.It doesn’t matter who consents to what…

You’ll find that the cherished concept of consent is routinely rubbished by radfems. “My body my choice” prevails… except when a woman chooses verboten jobs or sexual activities. All of you who haven’t attained radfems’ level of political consciousness, don’t worry though, they’ll make the choices for you. That’s the purpose of the collective: to police your lives and strong arm you into compliance. Can’t have individuals wrong choosing, can we?

Since male violence can’t be stopped and isn’t held accountable by much of society, I’d much rather focus on creating safe space and separatist community for radfem women and girls.

One might think I’d ridicule this, but I won’t. I strongly support people establishing their own communities and running them in accordance with their principles. Fully. Hell, I wish the socialists would do so; they’d learn some very valuable lessons. And save the rest of us from the pain and suffering brought forth by socialism. It’s the shambles they create I ridicule.

Shops? Petrol? Their own telecommunications system? Weather forecasting? No, no, no, a million times no.

“Sugarloaf had grown from the original 2 houses and a guest cottage to 4 houses, 2 guest cottages, a campground, and 3 large, undeveloped, wooded lots.”

Sad trombone.

What about the Susan B. Anthony Memorial Unrest Home? ‘Unrest’, get it? “There are currently 4 year round residences on the land – the original farmhouse with 4 bedrooms and 2 baths, a new 2 bed room house with full bath, a one room cabin with bath and a mobile home. Transitional housing is available for womyn exploring the possibilities of living on the land or short term internships. Eight womyn currently reside on the land.”

Eight?!

There’s no evidence of either being economically self sufficient, and certainly no evidence of burning it all down and building something better. Yes, they’re living apart from the Patriarchy, but it appears they’re very much reliant on being adjacent to the Patriarchy to survive. They’re more art communes that rely on campers and donations from those duped to think something meaningful is happening.

For such a shouty group who know better than the rest of us, the radfems are miserable failures at putting words into proof-of-concept. If you’re going to shoot for the stard, I’d better see a rocket you built. You’d think there would be thousands of women who would build a thriving community just to harrumph at men. The Rajneesh were able to pull it off in Washington state… until the power mad Ma Anand Sheela went loopy. The polygamist Mormon outlaws living apart are more self sustaining and the Amish make a far better go of it.

It appears to me the radfems’ vision of the manless utopia is everyone making arts and crafts from debris found on the beach whilst all the manifestations of modernity magically maintain them. What could be more radical feminist than magical thinking? Sounds comfy. Where do I sign up?

Are you seriously attack Murphy because there are crazy people commenting on her website and she moderates the comments?

Or have you recently discovered that political separatists of any stripe aren’t interested in equality, they want to run the show or they want to take their marbles and play somewhere else where they can run the show?

I wholeheartedly share your support for intentional radfem communities as it represents an actual solution to perceived problems. Unfortunately though, the radfem political cult doesn’t have a lot of interest in separate coexistence. It’s not good enough for them to simply live according to their own ethic: they have to force the rest of us unenlightened heathens to live according to their ethic as well.

@ GaGamba,
One of the things I always enjoy about your comments is that you often bring in additional data and perspectives to the running story. It takes a lot of work, and time, to both identify and coherently deliver pertinent details to the conversation, and yet you seem to do it so easily. So thank you for constantly elevating the comment treads beyond whatever the original articles author deemed sufficient.

Yet when we analyse the polygamist Mormon communities in Mexico, which operate without both government interference and welfare benefits, they are economically successful. Though plural marriage is illegal in the country, it appears it’s condoned by authorities. The Mormons were savvy by allowing non-Mormons to be educated in their schools, which were established long before the state did so, as well as participate in their agricultural cooperatives, which are very profitable. These built good will and alliances. They’re living the same rural lives of agriculture and light manufacturing they lived in the US prior to migrating, which suggests to me they had the talent and know-how to duplicate this where they established themselves. Conversely, the US-based ones face many more hardships, be they living on remote and marginally productive land to legal issues. Courtroom battles will drain bank accounts quickly. Certainly before the advent of benefits programmes such as Food Stamps in 1964 they were able to survive for decades.

Personally, I’m indifferent on the issue of polyamory. If a person has several out-of-wedlock relationships to my mind it’s little to no different than polygamy; there’s an argument to be made out-of-wedlock relationships provide fewer legal protections and may be more deceptive. Of course, if you’re not married you also are not responsible for the partner’s debt. My objection is the control of people, and the state’s effort to eradicate at times the practice goes a long way to keep these groups isolated and its people more vulnerable to exploitation. Either arrest and prosecute them all to end it or allow them to re-enter society to live openly. It’s these half measures that exacerbate a problem.

I try to avoid amped up expressions such as “virtual slavery” because the person isn’t bought, sold, or traded. Ownership a key aspect of slavery, and by ownership I don’t include virtual ownership. For example, parents don’t own their minor children; they are their guardians. People who claim to be wage slaves are over-egging it. Their employers don’t own them and can’t sell them to another employer. Further, often there are better words. Are they held in a state of peonage? Have they been imprisoned? Are they subjugated? Villeinage? Or is it a parent has assigned them many chores to do around the farm?

It’s not that I oppose polysemous words, but by being overly lax and imprecise we lose some nontrivial contexts. Thus, the overuse of slave and slavery. In the desire to liken something bad to something horrific there is dilution. People have made similar complaints about the over and imprecise use of the words rape, Nazi, fascist, socialist, etc.

I’m laughing so hard I’m crying! You know, you gotta admire the just, pure, undeniable rage concealed in these comments. They practically vibrate!

You’re so bothered, by everything these women do. Even despite the painful measures you take to make it seem like you’ve stumbled upon these women’s lives & your judgment is flippant & coming from a purely rational place. I can imagine it now: you’re in a room, all the windows boarded shut, the only source of light is a small fluorescent bulb dangling haphazardly above your computer—you can’t sleep, it’s 3am, you must know, you must!: what are the radical feminists up to? How do these women not know they are this stupid? & who else will be brave enough, nay—BOLD enough—to tell them?

It’s like part anthropology/part manifesto/part soap opera. Like you’re simultaneously horrified, yet obsessed, with these women’s lives. I for one am a big fan! Bravo! What would us child-women do without you? 😉

Thanks for keeping sex in sex, Meghan Murphy. Obviously that idea that biological sex is a “thing,” isn’t just a feminist idea. Unfortunately, rational thought is up against trans activists and allies, a subset of all transgender people who want not just inclusion, but revolution in how sex is defined.

Biology matters. Humans are sexually dimorphic. Feminine males exist to varying degrees as do masculine females. Both exist and should be respected.

However, gender dysphoria is a feeling. Feelings deal with the mind and are in the realm of psychology. Gender dysphoria is a mental health issue. Gender Dysphoria is not one thing, nor is it innate. It can vary in intensity or go away. Motivations vary across age, sex, cultures, etc. Keep in mind, people can, and do, live very full lives with mental health issues.

Transgender people may choose to signal they belong to the class of men or the class of females–and dress and undergo hormones or surgery should they think that it is best for their mental health. But they will never change actual sex. Many transgender people believe this as well, and go on and live their lives. To understand fully, you must know about Homosexual Transsexuals (HSTS) (think Blair White) and Autogynephilc transsexuals (AGP) (think Caitlyn Jenner).

AGP =heterosexual natal males are in love with the thought of themselves as a woman and dress as a representation of what they are attracted to–usually younger, tart looking women, TBH. None of these guys are dressing as grandma. It’s mainly a Western male thing. And they may or may not be gender dsyphoric.

Just my opinion, but not mine alone, but it is the AGPs with gender dsyphoria who are in denial that they even have AGP *and* reject that it is a mental illness are the ones most violent in word and deed when it is suggested that they aren’t female. The veil can not be dropped. They are also the ones claiming they are lesbian, thus their anger at lesbians who reject them. Hmmm. All this hostility and aggression seems like a masculine trait?

Trans activists and allies attempt to redefine sex as a feeling based on a “gender identity” as it thwarts it being seen as a mental health issue. And have done so with some success. “Gender identity” as written in law denies the natural differences between men and women and asserts that sex is in no way rooted in biology. Can “woman” be just an identity, divorced from biology? If so, how do you protect the rights of something undefinable, unknowable, unfalsifiable that resides only in the minds of people? When anyone can identify as any class of people, the laws protecting that class are negated and are not necessary.

Seems like nothing will change until “gender identity” laws and policies affect your mom, sister, daughter, grandma, etc…or, voices join up to make a big enough objection, which I see as what Meghan Murphy is doing.

Inclusion. Not Revolution. And some honesty that this is a mental health issue.

Looks to me like the radfems are sitting down to a feast of schadenfreude with a side of crow, followed with karma for dessert. All served ice-cold.

Every revolution spawns a counter-revolution and Transgenderism is a counter-revolution. As more eeeeeeevil men recognize the counter revolutionary potential of Transgenderism, expect more hilarity to ensue. Such are the fruits of fourth generation feminism.

While I don’t pretend to know how this will all salt out, I suspect that 5th wave feminism will include demands for segregation by biological sex, veils, and dowries.

Could a lot of this be simply a big fanciful fad practiced by a population who feels the urgent need to assume a hero’s roll? We live here within a culture whose circus identity is fantasy. Is there a distinct front lines of actual action for mediocre heros?

Question: What percentage of the female sex is comprised of ‘radfems’? I bet the answer is around 5%.

So, why are some men so obsessed with selling their daughters, mothers, sisters, out just to get back at the ‘radfems’? How can any decent family man look his daughter in the face, and tell her that she has to share a restroom or changing area with a strange man? How could a father not feel sympathy for his teenage daughter who lost her spot on the women’s track team because a boy took her place?

“Every revolution spawns a counter-revolution and Transgenderism is a counter-revolution. As more eeeeeeevil men recognize the counter revolutionary potential of Transgenderism, expect more hilarity to ensue. Such are the fruits of fourth generation feminism.”

It has been often said that transgender politics is part of the neoliberal, post modern backlash against feminism. I didn’t want to believe it at first. After reading some of the comments, I know it now. Some men who never liked the idea of women getting the vote can now cheer other men (in dresses) when they make death threats to women. Those uppity women get what they deserve even if it means little girls who could be anyone’s daughter have to share a restroom or changing room with a male. Men sticking together, some men in dresses, against the evil feminists is more important than a little girl’s dignity and privacy.

No decent family man wants a grown man sharing the same restroom with his little girl. Most men are decent.

My, my but do you paint with a broad brush! So if I understand your point of view correctly, you’re equating opposition to radfems to wanting to end women’s right to vote? Perhaps there is another explanation? There are people such as myself who were supportive of feminism when it’s message was one of equality, but came to oppose radical feminism when it’s goals became the suppression of men and misandry.

You see decent family men have sons as well as daughters. Transgendered people make up far less than 1% of the population. So the chances that our daughters will end up in a restroom with a transgendered person is vanishingly small. As if that would be a problem in any case. While I don’t claim much knowledge of habits in the ladies room, I’m fairly certain that comparing each other’s genitalia is not a normal part of the experience. Our sons on the other hand have a very high chance of encountering institutional discrimination thanks to the ongoing efforts of radfems.

Transgenderism isn’t a threat or a problem. Radical feminism? Well. Just ask someone who has lost their job or reputation due to an innocent joke or offhanded remark.

While I don’t claim much knowledge of habits in the ladies room, I’m fairly certain that comparing each other’s genitalia is not a normal part of the experience.

I don’t discount entirely the concerns of those who have objections to sharing lavatories with transgenders. Stop labeling them men’s and women’s rooms. Declare one is for people with penises and the other people with vulvas. These rooms are for excretion, a biological function, and segregating by biology is justifiable. This puts the gendertrenders floating around in the in-between fluidy state back into the appropriate lavatory whilst whose who have transitioned fully – real McCoy transexuals – will use the one appropriate for their constructed penises or vulvas. I presume those who’ve transitioned are much less likely to pose a sexual threat to women, though the domestic violence rate of lesbians in same-sex partnerships casts doubt on their purported non-aggressiveness. Since locker rooms adjoin lavatories and showers, these too would be covered.

P rooms and V rooms are the solution. Get rid of the stick persons. For those who don’t speak the language, lucky for them the shape of those two letters of the alphabet reveal who uses what.

For those who’ve suffered a severe genital altering injury, I think we’ll let them decide whether or not they want to continue using the same facilities they used prior to their misfortune.

@ga gamba Why not label bathrooms according to long uretha and short uretha? Please tell me you are being sarcastic. This sounds like the Menstruators and Ejaculators parody I saw online after a news outlet used “menstruators” instead of “women” in order to not offend “women with penises.”

Why relegate “Men” and “Women” labels as not biological enough? We resort to parts of a whole?

Woman are vulnerable because of their anatomy but also don’t like to be leared at even if nothing rises to the level of a crime–it’s the fear of the possibility. One never knows. As it is, a lone women may skip the train station bathroom late at night when a restroom isn’t busy because there is safety in numbers when half naked in a stall to pee.

Predatory males–a subset of all males–go to extraordinary great lengths to gain access to women and children. That risk will always be there, but it is increased with transgenderism as the predatory males don’t have to try very hard to access women spaces–they are permitted to be there under “gender identity” laws. If they “think they are women, they are” under law. It’s unfalsifiable. They need not change their outer appearance at all. They can lurk day after day in bathrooms. Touch young girls who may not report it or proposition teens who don’t even know better that they are being targeted. Yadda, yadda…you get the point.

Flipping it around, why not attempt to make males more accommodating and sensitive to the needs of feminine males so transsexuals don’t have to be in fear in the men’s bathroom? Isn’t that one of the main reasons transsexuals want access to women’s bathrooms? Ironic to think they are trying to escape the same possible male harrassment woman are–thus why women’s and men’s bathrooms were probably divided in the first place.

I enjoy how afraid you are of losing your job for telling jokes. I also enjoy how thoroughly you & other men take on this specific tone—have you noticed yet? It’s the “rational” tone. Literally every male commenter has used it thus far. Men can be rational about women’s issues as they experience almost no part of them. What you’re really saying when you cry about the change in feminism is that women don’t worship the ground you walk on anymore, & this has had repercussions for your ego & your sense of place (ie perceived significance) in the world.

I, for one, don’t really enjoy self-application of the title “man-hating”… feels very corny to me. What I do enjoy is speaking with women who are enlightened to the fact that they, unlike their mothers, do not have to settle for second best, settle for a man who disrespects her, hurts her, abuses her.

I think it’s telling that you’re so afraid of a world where men are not the main axis of women’s orbit. What exactly are you scared of? That women will make men walk on all fours with studded leashes around their necks? Get a grip dude. There is nothing women could do to men that is worse than men have done to women. With 90% of all violent crimes committed by men, your son has a greater chance of getting murdered by a man than getting falsely accused of sexual assault at the workplace.

Ultimately, the weird, fantastical fears you harbor are just excuses. Justifications for choosing to sit back & whine about what feminism has apparently “done” to men, when despite feminism’s very best efforts, men continue to harass, assault, abuse, rape, mutilate, & kill women. What you’re afraid of is change. Not feminists. At least own up it.

Thick skins have been categorised as belonging to the dignity culture (by Jonathan Haidt), but, in the meantime, he explains, we have entered the victimhood culture, where thick skins are a liability iso a positive characteristic. So, John, be with us, and forget about that thick skin.

I was once caught short on a walk, fortunately not too far from some public toilets. However, when I reached them I was horrified to discover that the door to the gents was locked. The ladies, on the other hand, was fully operational. What a stroke of luck, then, to find that I suddenly self-identified as female, and was thus able to relieve myself without guilt. Oddly enough, I then immediately re-self-identified as male, and proceeded on my way.

“Men are not Women” sounds banal and innocent enough. But what if a man transition into becoming a woman? Now your statement is about whether you acknowledge the transition. So first, let’s stop pretending innocence. “Jews aren’t Gentiles” is a similar innocent statement. But what if a Jew becomes, say, a Christian? And what if one does not acknowledge that? That’s what gave the Spanish Inquisition so much work, and it wasn’t an innocent statement at all, was it. It was pretty hateful.

Set aside the late leftist insanity of our advanced societies, and there are still interesting questions to ask about how Twitter works its own particular form of inanity. Obviously, an algorithm did not pick up on the hatred embedded in “Men aren’t women.” Only a particular kind of person could do that. I know that there are various social media gangstormings that push bans and other kinds of oppression and suppression of speech on Twitter and elsewhere, but I am suspecting that there are also internal gangs at Twitter, digital antifa, who thug up accounts of people who don’t conform to the going progressive line.

Damore at Google was done in by gangs of this sort who operate within Google in bureaucratic positions and exercise power over folks who don’t toe the progressive line. These gangs are in some ways more powerful than the Great Coward and Liar Sundar himself. I wish that Twitter would make this process of banning (of any kind or degree) more transparent. There are individuals and gangs doing real damage to people. Twitter should not provide them cover.

Women is weaker that a man. Both physically and emotionally. So on all times woman have institutional protection in form of men, than they belong to and they protected by. Fenrnism remove this protection by removing belongings. So woman now face requirements to defend themselves alone. They can do it not anyways, cause men is vastly superior in the ways of agression. You cannot by weak, free and protected all at once. You must choose 2 options.

I don’t understand why when these laundry lists of violence against women who resist the end of sex-segregated spaces never include the case of Dana Rivers, who in November of 2016 murdered two women only space supporting lesbians, and their son. A lesbophobic hate crime mass murder, and no one ever brings it up. The male to female transsexual Rivers was a leading, nationally known trans activist, who appeared on Oprah in the past, campaigned successfully shut Michfest, and is now awaiting trial for the brutal murder of women in a women’s jail. I just don’t get why this isn’t front page news every day in the campaign to evidence male pattern violence against the women who refuse to say the things male hegemonists demand they say, and do the things they demand they do.

Probably because that is not evidence of a pattern. The pattern is in your imagination. To the rest of us this is some crazy person who murdered people for no good reason, which is why he is in jail awaiting trial. Here’s a pro tip. When society is punishing someone for doing something it means society does not approve of their actions. So not only is there not an organized campaign to control women with violence, when violence is done to women society is actively opposed to it.

Pity that none of those who take gender/women’s studies are required to read “The Gulag Archipelago.” All they’re doing is repeating history and as everyone knows who has read that three volume magnum opus, they’re also doing it to themselves.

I think this is a case of the snake being forced to eat it’s own tail.

As the feminist movement ages and matures it will assume the responsibilities of the so called Patriarchy and will need to act increasingly in the interests of society as a whole instead of simply the female perspective.
Growth is painful, this encounter with the lunatic fringe is just a step on the way to maturity.

I was initially delighted that someone who uses the work ‘patriarchy’ unironically had been shut down by separate wing of the outrage-left. There does seem to be more than a tinge of karma about the whole thing… and then I remembered I am a free speech absolutist so went off and signed the petition to get Meghan reinstated. It doesn’t look like that will happen, twitter are digging their heels in. Anyway, great article Meghan!

Thank you for the thoughtful and well-reasoned article. I doubt we agree on much (I am probably not what you’d consider a feminist, and I’m sure you’d find a lot of my beliefs abhorrent), but I am hopeful that if leaders like you on many sides insist on open, unfettered dialog the world will get a little better. While at the end of your article you downplayed the affect the ban had on you, I am sure that it is painful — hurtful — for a cause that you’ve devoted your life to to seemingly turn its back on you. I’m sorry about that.

I’m a bit of a world history dork, and in particular spent a fair amount of time on the Chinese Cultural Revolution. There are eerie parallels here. While I thought for a long time that it was restricted to shaming / speech, the stories above on borderline violence are alarming. To avoid the worst excesses of ideological pressure, it’s so important for people like you to call it out. Thanks.

JD, The analogy to the Chinese Cultural Revolution is a good one. For better or worse, I have read quite a bit about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Actual violence and terror were commonplace. People were routinely killed. The book Wild Swans covers the Chinese Cultural Revolution in some detail. The author (Jung Chang) has never forgiven Mao and his acolytes for the murder of her father (a devoted and entirely sincere communist).

More recently, Cixin Liu has written the (excellent) “Three-body Problem”. It contains a ferocious denunciation of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Note that Jung Chang’s books (but not her) are banned in China. Cixin Liu is not a banned writer in China (either personally or his books).

You just can’t make up this level of insanity. The left or whatever the hell these folks define themselves as politically …always have purity tests and they mostly don’t end well for those that fail. History does repeat.

I hope this experience teaches the author that her ideology begot this monstrosity, and she takes appropriate steps to deradicalize.

I realise that most trans people coming out today are likely victims of social contagion as opposed to actual gender dysphoria, but we should still address the point that people with this serious medical condition are being exploited by others for political purposes. It wouldn’t be deemed ethical to affirm the internal perception of anorexics or compulsive body builders, so why further victimise people suffering from gender dysphoria? Encouraging mentally ill people to pursue impossible dreams that set them in conflict with reality is cruel.

Well this article is rather confusing to me. But then again, as a centrist, that’s exactly why I read Quillette; I want to challenge my thinking.

So I agree with the authors general sentiment that these “anti-TERF” people are making an issue where there is none. And I obviously do not condone violence against women by anyone under any circumstance …but here is where I get confused. The author’s stated “axe to grind” with trans people sounds a lot like the hysterical right-wing bathroom bill supporters! Does the author really believe that there are lots of people out there pretending to be trans just so that they can infiltrate the lady’s room and leer at women? That sounds like a Trumpist paranoid fantasy!

There was a fellow in Toronto who claimed to be a woman, got into a women’s shelter and raped two women.
Karen White, a male rapist, claimed to be a woman and UK officials let him into women’s prison where he started sexually assaulting real women.
Meghan noted in the above article about the man allowed into a Fresno women’s shelter who perved on the real women there.
There was a case of a man who climbed into a porta-potty and sat in the chemical water/human waste part to perv on women.
And wasn’t there some guy who actually BUILT a hotel with hidden cameras installed to perv on women?
That Yaniv person, the wax-my-balls guy, has chats up about how he wants to approach ten year old girls in locker/shower rooms and “bond” with them by showing them how to insert tampons……..

So, yeah, since under pro-trans policies a man does NOT need any counseling, does NOT need any surgeries, does NOT need to be on hormones, etc. to be allowed in women’s spaces, it is going to be Springtime For Perverts and Pedophiles even more in the future. You don’t have to argue with me about it – just wait for the cases to start rolling in (and remember those will be the guys who got CAUGHT, not all the guys who did not get caught yet).

If I might take another stab at this… I disagree with the author’s dismissal of “mystical …male mind.” I do believe that men and women have different minds. Jordan Peterson talks about the research that has proven that males have more interest in “things” and females have more interest in people, and that this explains why certain fields skew towards one gender or the other.

However, what I find interesting is that the average SJW is rather selective when it comes to acknowledging that our brains / minds are “gendered.” If you question whether or not being trans is a real thing, the SJW will tell you that a trans woman was born with a woman’s mind in a man’s body and trans man, vice versa. They will tell you that there are scientifically variable neurological difference that explain this. But tell that same SJW that differences between the male and female brain account for the lack of women in STEM and they’ll say that answer is junk science! They’ll say there’s no difference between the man’s brain and the women’s brain! They claim sex differences in neurobiology when defends trans advocacy but deny it when it explains the gender gap in STEM!

Those differences are only on average, however. Plenty of women still have interest in “things” more than plenty of men. You can’t define someone as a man or a woman based on that or any other psychological criterion. However, the average differences do go a long way (all the way?) towards explaining the different fields the sexes choose to go into.

I once asked a feminist this. “So if there’s no difference between male and female brains, how come transpeople want to become the opposite sex?”. She said “well, just because”. As if decision to do a transition is like buying a pack of crisps. Something you do “just because”. Well, that’s just ridiculous.

I’ve written this before on Quillette, and I dare say I’ll write it again.

Feminists lie about the “gender wage gap” and “rape culture” through false statistics. Feminism devalues femininity and reviles masculinity. We’ve had at least 50 years of this being shoved down our collective throat.

And now you come running to us when the Radical Left lines you up?

Now you have the equality you were after, as you are now being attacked the same way in which men have been attacked by feminism. You made your bed, now sleep in it.

1. a hipster who sees feminism as a way to be trendy. Shave one side of your head and buy a T-shirt that says “The Future is Female”. Now post something snarky and derogatory on social media about “brogrammers” or #metoo and look at how relevant we’ve become!

2. an underachiever who has a poor relationship with her father. “My dad is an asshole and I’m not smart enough to take a real major in college. I know, I’ll do gender studies! It’s the patriarchy’s fault that I’m fucking useless!”

1. The kind who leave comments like these, insecure, weak of mind, have already/will eventually call themselves incels, watch violent porn, possibly haven’t washed their dick in a week

2. The kind who work & enjoy life blissfully aware that feminism is for the benefit of women, not to the detriment of men, golf on the weekends

Like, I agree with you about the first one. What once was a movement that fueled change is now just an excuse to get a trophy or brownie points. But you couldn’t resist a daddy issues trope could ya? You men, always lacking in originality. Thanks for the laugh.

Literally no radical feminist is running to men. We are no closer to equality than pornsick men are to health & wellness.

We reaped no benefit in the meantime, & we reap no benefit now. No one is asking for men’s help. Have we ever? God, it’s crazy watching you all throw so many individual bitchfits about how feminism devalues male life, when really, feminism merely Values Female Life. It’s your own fault that those ideas are equal in your mind.

With that said, you’ll have to find someone else to blame this on once transgenders come for you. They’re after gay men now. Who’s to say you won’t be next? I’d tread carefully.

But more reasonable posters are pointing out that, yes, radical feminists are right to complain about their treatment by trans-activists, but that they’ve gone after their opponents in the same way. Not ‘bitchfitting’, just evincing hypocrisy.

That said, fairminded feminists, as Murphy seems to me to be, deserve support in fighting the more lunatic demands and ideas of the trans-movement.

‪Have you ever watched the documentary “9 months that made me” detailing all sorts of weird problems from gestational insults? It only made me wonder what other problems originate there and the teratogens that cause them…but have now become unmentionable. Science rules..needed.‬

As an ex-left, dissident feminist (Second Wave) and YVR-ite, I’m very grateful for the work Murphy is doing. Lots of us are trying to say what she’s saying on Twitter and elsewhere, if that helps. But as she notes, Twitter’s little blue bird is just a tweeting totalitarian.

Very glad she wrote here. I followed her appearance with Jordan Peterson on the Senate appearances for Bill C16, and somehow at that time and since then I had the impression she was also transgender. I believe I was wrong. Everything’s confusing these days! Glad I’ve gotten facts straight. Keep up the good work, Meghan!

Very true. If the trans ideology is fully embraced, the words will be essentially meaningless labels as you stated, which then raises the question of why anyone should care which of the labels is applied to them to begin with. It’s something like a catch 22.

This is what happens when we can’t agree on categories. Some people think emancipation lies in eliminating them, others in conserving them for strategic purposes. These groups fight. The right benefits.

I have long maintained that the tone of the social discourse would change when feminists who champion the “believe all women” mantra started to see their sons, husbands, brothers and fathers getting fired from their jobs, expelled from college and tossed in jail based on evidence-free historic allegations. I was right. Now the cry of “RAPE APOLOGIST” has started to ring just a bit hollow when it’s used to shout down warnings about the dangers of short-circuiting due process.

In the recent past, when Ms. Murphy set out to de-platform people whose views opposed her own, I’m certain she had no inkling that she herself would be de-platformed. Now that she’s been served an extra helping of the same shit-pie she helped to bake, I’m cautiously optimistic that she might, in the future, be a little less zealous in her attempts to silence her critics.

On another note, I wonder if Twitter’s purpose in actively policing the comments of feminists like Ms. Murphy is precisely to use SJW tactics against the strongest proponents of such tactics. Twitter doesn’t want to be in the business of banning statements like “men and women are different” or other equivalents of 2+2=4. They’re purposely taking the most absurdly militant approach – ostensibly in favour of the most ardent left-wing zealots – in order to motivate an army of up-until-now silent political centrists to speak up in favor of common sense.

Good old Meghan loved putting her fingers in her rears & sing la la la when sex workers told her that the Nordic Model on Sex work is criminalization for them as well. She gets no sympathy from me. Indeed I looked at her arse kissing of the Right Wingers. The very same Right Wingers who view Sweden as a farce. Comical if not laughable. She gets no sympathy from me although I agree xy=male.

Will Meghan Murphy admit to only her comments about men being men because she wants to carry on her Misandry combined with her racism to white males?

Will she allow Incels freedom of speech just as she demands? This here is the litmus test. Will she allow for people to campaign for the recriminalization of homosexuality & those who promote it like she promotes lesbianism by allowing that under the guise of “muh feminism much”? Starting with her going to prison first?

Don’t throw stones in your glass house Meghan dahling. Your cognitive dissonance is creating a chasm so big that you’ll get sucked into it & vaporized.

I wrote the following review of “Journey into the Whirlwind” by Eugenia Ginzburg. It is sadly applicable.

All of the Horrors of the Gulag and Then Some

I read this story of the Gulag with great interest. The writer, the story, and the translation (from Russian) are all excellent. The horrors of the Gulag are in full display in the book. A honest, loyal Communist falls afoul of the Soviet authorities and is condemned to decades of suffering. Did she do anything wrong? From a Communist perspective, the answer is clearly no (and she was eventually rehabilitated).

However, a disturbing question must be asked. She never questioned the system as long the people being tortured by régime were people she regarded as “enemies”. Only when she was caught up in the insanity, did it start appearing evil. This is not some random point. The author clearly had her own doubts. Quote from the book (page 112).

“I feel sorry for you personally. But I tell you frankly that I’m glad the Communists are beginning to get a taste of the own medicine.”

Those words are from a Social Revolutionary (another far-left group). For better or (much) worse the Communists were utterly willing to torture and murder anyone who deviated from the party line in any way. The fact that Socialist Revolutionaries supported almost the entire Communist program didn’t help them in the slightest. They were massacred anyway.

In the epilog the author states that she wrote her memoirs in the hope that her grandson could read then by 1980. She expresses great enthusiasm for the 20th and 22sncd Party Congresses (that led to her being rehabilitated and released from the Gulag). However, he book was still banned in the USSR until 1990.

The sad truth is that Gulag was not an aberration resulting from Stalin’s “cult of personality”. Stalin (indirectly) sent the author to the Gulag. However, the Gulag was built by Lenin, not Stalin. Mass murder was always the basis of the government’s power. Stalin was somewhat unique in killing Communists along with “enemies”.

People screaming that “men are not women” is kind of like screaming that you can’t shout fire in a crowded theatre while arguing against free speech. It may technically be true, but it completely missed the point. Absolutely no one who phenotypically male and trans believes that they are physically equivalent to a phenotypical female. That is obviously not what they are talking about. Literally everyone that is sane, concedes the fact that phenotypical sexual traits are exactly that. When trans people ask to be identified as the sex they identify as, they are explaining that they suffer from gender dysphoria, and they are asking for a little human decency by asking that others treat them as they perceive their brain wiring. There are plenty of studies showing that it is quite possible for someone to have male or female brain wiring while inhabiting a body with the opposite physical traits, to speak nothing of issues of extra chromosomes and people who are born intersexed. Trying to pretend like sexual organs are the only thing involved in determining maleness or femaleness is a bit like declaring that anything that has wings must surely be a plane. There are certainly other definitions that could as legitimately be used. If your argument is only about linguistics, then you should concede that it’s a petty argument, but we all know that the people typically screaming that “Men aren’t women!” are way too emotionally invested in the outcome of this argument for it to simply be a semantic disagreement.

There is all kinds of middle ground on this debate. We can have compassion for people with gender dysphoria and respect them individually, by treating them they way they identify. We can generally refrain from being assholes, while also not letting TERF’s slide for being bigoted and sexist jerks (TERFs are arguing that phenotypically female bodies are somehow deserving of extra rights, or attention, which is the definition of sexism). We can agree that radical trans activist are also jerks. You should not be required to call someone by the pronouns they demand, nor is it unreasonable to make assumptions based on someone’s apparent sex. Finally, we can all agree that people who want to pretend like gender fluidity is a thing you can change daily, are at best seriously mentally ill, or at worst transtrenders, and they do a huge disservice to people with actual gender dysphoria.

I broadly agree. It seems that gender can be defined in at least three ways: biological, identity and social role. It’s possible to identify as someone of opposite sex, take on their social role (new name and so on), as well as do what our technology permits to change the body. Now, it is true that hormones and surgery can’t do that much, and switching social roles doesn’t replicate the experience of growing up, from the very beginning, as a female. This is, I think, what sticks in the craw of many feminists, and of course it’s an emotional argument as well. There are plenty of semantic arguments that are like that (definition of the freedom of speech, for example). Me, I don’t think that 2.3/3 is quite the same thing as 3/3 (aka. real woman), but if someone is willing to walk the walk, I’ll talk the talk. Little white lies won’t kill anyone.

However, trans activists and the progressives reflexively taking their marching orders from members of ‘marginalized groups’ aren’t happy with that. It’s not supposed to be my freely taken choice to tell that little white lie. Instead I should believe that transwomen are 3/3. Doing what Meghan Murphy did is hate speech and completely beyond the pale. Now, we should treat trans people with dignity, but we should also be able to juggle opposing goods. The freedom of speech and conscience weighs a good bit more in my books, even though I often disagree on how people use it.

“The studies actually show that there is no such thing as male and female brain wiring.”

What studies would that be? You mean like the study by Dr. Daphna Joel of Hebrew University that got tons of press coverage? Well, there’s this thing called “peer review”, unfortunately for Dr. Joel. Review of her research found that not only were her claims that there is no such thing as a male and female brain not substantiated, her own data showed that there are structures in the brain that that one can reliably use to identify whether one is looking at a brain that came from a male or a female.

Not only was she wrong about this, Dr. Joel went on to make the remarkable claim that she had answered the question of male/female brain once and for all — what kind of scientist says that? — further, if anyone does continue such research, it is because they are misogynist. Yes, as you can see, Dr. Joel is a very reliable source. After all, she did a TED Talk, didn’t she?

The belief that there is no difference between male and female brains fits with a certain political narrative that, apparently, quite a lot of people fervently hope were true, but the empirical evidence, despite claims to the contrary, just does not support this view

Yes! ideological revolutions usually eat their own pretty fast. This is why, Professor Peterson isnsitently recommends “The Gulag Arhipelago” as a fundamental reading for our age. Ms. Meredith would probably be surprised to find out that she is not the victim of some new phenomenon, but the author of a repeating historical pattern who, like her predecessors, lacks any ability of introspection. Once you become a champion of silencing thought and speech, you end up on the menu. It is just a matter of time. Also, in perfect harmony with the historical precedent, those who end up wielding the power, have a weird fascination with baseball bats and barbed wire and “re-education” at -30 degrees Celsius. With luck, we might avoid said “re-education” if people like Ms. Meredith start seeing in which way they were instrumental in raising this sleeping dragon. Who knows? Maybe this article is a first and timid step?

Bruce Jenner looks like a woman but has not had genital surgery and still wants to have sex with women using his penis.
In Britain a man claiming to be a woman was imprisoned in the women’s prison and promptly assaulted 4 women. Claims that none of this can happen and that women should just accept men in their showers is sick.
Even sicker are attempts to transition children who cannot know what it feels like to be a man or woman because puberty has not hit. We don’t let them vote, drive, sign contracts, or marry –but transition? it is their right!!

opinions regarding the *feminist vs terf* issue barely matter anymore. it’s all been done. transgender activists have succeeded in convincing the right people (the progressive mass with apparently more reach to morality than every other person) that the transgender struggle for inclusion bears equivalent or even more moral gravitas to issues like gay rights and civil rights. so the floor isn’t open for dissenting opinions anymore. even scientifically-laden data can’t do. I’m sorry, meghan, but that’s just the way it is.

While I agree with pretty much everything Meghan has written here, I have to ask her if she does not recognize that these are the same tactics used against people who hold the previously-common view that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Look at what was done to Brendan Eich.

These sorts of tactics are also being used against a large range of people who hold traditional or conservative views on many topics.

The bottom line is you either acknowledge that everyone has freedom of speech, or no one will.

No, she isn’t, and neither is Vicky. As good Christians, we have the plight to keep contact and understanding with them, they can’t help, God knows what happened in their childhood, maybe very nasty things.

It is time for feminists like Meghan Murphy to take a really honest look at the politics they have espoused for years, because they are in part responsible for throwing the boomerang that has circled and cracked them on the head.
The neomodern philosophy based on power imbalances and intersectionalism is the underlying fatal seed that has grown into a Frankenstein monster. Splitting society into groups according to their sense of victimisation and encouraging them to act on grievances and resentments, real or imagined, is a recipe with a 100% potential for violence. Normally feminists and the trans movement would never criticise each other, because it is an unwritten rule that non-privileged groups do not do so. The fact that feminists do not criticise the patriarchy of Muslim society is an example of this. But the trans group encroached on feminist territory when they decreed that men who live as women actually have become so, and our prime minister promptly enshrined it into law. This is why the sparks are flying.
It is time to acknowledge that tribal politics are dangerous and destructive. In a true democracy the common good prevails over tribal values, but in our society today it is the noisiest, most aggressive and most intolerant group that sets the rules. And when politicians abrogate their responsibility to fight for the common good an instead allow special interest groups to set the agenda they are setting up society for inevitable conflict.
One need only look at Paris today to see where this leads. 75% of the public support the yellow vests and many of the protesters are in their 70s, protesting for the first time since the 1960s. The tolerant majority will be tolerant for only so long. Ignoring the needs of the majority by pandering to noisy minorities will have consequences.

Very well put. Western societies peaked when the common good played a role, but not an authoritarian one. Unfortunately, the common good has now left the building, and tribalism thrives.

Two of the turning points were the ending of the military draft, and the demise of the Soviet Union (and thus the ending of the Cold War). Both good things in themselves, but with paradoxical results. The late 70s to mid-90s seems to be the period in which Postmodernism morphs into political correctness.

So apparently absolutism doesn’t work too well. One problem is our difficulty in regarding major/minor distributions as optimal. We want black & white, or 50/50. 90/10 seems to trigger feelings of injustice and disgust (as though the ’10’ was contamination), or an irritating sense of incompleteness, like a circle with a missing segment one can’t resist “filling in”.

Don’t play the victim here, Peter, are you really harassed by the 2%? In my ambience (street, terraces, family, colleagues), I don’t sense anything of that crazy men/women dichotomy or controversy, and do you ? Or is it something of literature and the academic world?

For example, never in my life encountered a Monica like here on Quillette, but really would love having the pleasure of such an encounter, especialy on a hot summer afternoon, somewhere on a terrace (with beer and white wine), with other, normal people also around, and then discuss and argue and shout and laugh, so, not like here, where there is no laughter and no body language.

I am off-the-radar at this point. So my views don’t have any negative impact on my life. However, could I work for a Tech company and freely express my opinions? Of course, not. Could I express my opinions in any public forum, without reprisals? Of course, not.

If I was PC/SJW racist, the NYT would rush to hire me. With my anti-racist, anti-sexist, pro-reality views I am beyond the pale.

What is troubling about this piece is not necessarily what the writer says, though I largely disagree, but rather what evidence is used. I would argue her opinions, strong, come equally from some ‘mystical’ identity as the trans folks.

She makes no meaningful reference to human psychology or psychiatry, almost nothing that medical professionals have to say on this. The writer is, quite rationally, concerned for her identity as one stripe of feminist in the social hierarchy as it relates to HER viability therein. What makes trans women threatening to the writer, it seems, is that some have penises. Such is an expression of bias, perhaps warranted. But let’s watch as the right-leaning come to her aid and comfort as they excoriate other feminists who criticize men viciously.

The writer cites examples of harassment against others like her, violence, strikingly similar to the examples trans activists might use. She’s the same. She just doesn’t like those other ones with male parts. For that, I like her even less.

May I suggest that the root cause of the negative actions you wrote on is not anti-transgender or anti-female/male, but is simply class warfare. For example, “Hailey Heartless” seems to be a member of or at least acting in the economic interests of, the enabling class. “Hailey Heartless” certainly doesn’t appear to be a member of the poor class.

The actions you described all have a common denominator of an attack on those without political or financial power.

My conclusion (and this with a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee) is to say that seeing the deeper causes of your article’s issues can lead to better solutions-like forming groups that correctly identify their real enemies-the rich and their enablers-rather than continue splitting people apart from their deeper wants, needs, and desires.

Sorry.
Not too upset that the leftists are eating their own, particularly against Ms Murphy.
I’ve seen Ms Murphy’s website, which is strongly feminist (no surprise), somewhat misandrist (no surprise) and anti-trans. (Surprise).
Later a commentary by her was posted on Quora about some Feminist, misandrist issue.
I left a long comment and later was sent a notice that my comment was being removed due to objections from someone. I’m guessing Ms Murphy herself. I appealed and got my comment reinstated.
But the point is, Ms Murphy and her allies themselves are to blame for their own ostracization. In tearing down social, biological, gender barriers, you’re going to get both the good (what you want) and the bad (what you don’t). It’s too late now to complain that the ideological paradigms that you previously championed are now being used against you. It’s called IRONY. From a Feminist perspective, it’s like some old male geezer gets a mail-order bride from the 3rd world, thinking that she’d be more subservient and traditional than American women. But when she gets here and tastes societal freedom, she becomes a radical feminist. That’s ironic, and hilarious. In actively trying to tear down the ideological wall between men and women, AND allying themselves with other leftists who literally wanted to tear down the walls of objectivity/science/meaning, feminists have trapped themselves into a corner. Now women can be men and men can be women. Which is NOT what the feminists wanted and those, like Ms Murphy, who object, are vilified and ostracized.
Again, IRONIC and HILARIOUS.
THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES!

MM, The following is a quote from a Rick Smith (Postdoctoral Fellow, Neukom Institute, Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College)

“How many times will we have to say that race, sex, and gender have no inherent genetic basis that meaningfully conforms to dominant western social and political categories? It’s exhausting. And critique is important, but taken alone it will never be enough.”

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